Right, I'm sick of doing something, then forgetting what I did and loosing all the links when I have to change something, so maybe if I jot things down here, I'll be able to come back to it !

Todays utterly pointless Geeky task - Home Mail Server

So, I want to use my home ubuntu server to get my mail. We've got three or four PC's in the house, and it's getting annoying only having my mail on one machine. Plus, there's a lack of motion around the SAWin 32 project, and I'd like to keep up to date against the scum sucking spammers. This one uses various components;

FetchMail: This downloads my mail from my ISP via POP and passes it to....

Postfix: A Mail Server, it pases my mail to ...

Spam Assassin: This scans the mail, and if it's spammy, it tags it as spam, then passes it back to ...

Postfix, which then stores it in a MailDir where....

Dovecot: A IMAP mail server, this then serves up my Maildir via IMAP to ....

Thunderbird on my Laptop.

So, Steps in Order

Install and Configure Postfix

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Postfix

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostfixBasicSetupHowto

Install Dovecot

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Dovecot

http://wiki.dovecot.org/

This was complicated because the guides suggested using port 10143 for IMAP, and Thunderbird defaulted to 143 and complained there was no response. Took a while to catch that one !