Mac Mini

Apple Mac Mini

How-to
• Burn a Debian installer CD
• Partition the hard disk
• Configure yaboot
• Configure NFS
• Configure SSL certificates
• Configure an IMAP server
• Configure an SMTP server
• Make a Mini cluster
• Configure a UPS

Configure IMAP

Since I own my own domain, I can handle all my mail myself. For a mail server, IMAP is a much better choice than POP since IMAP can do everything POP can do and more.

Configuring the server

There are a few choices for an IMAP server: Courier, Cyrus, Dovecot, and UW. Courier and Cyrus are "enterprise level" servers so, while they'd work, they're overkill for a home IMAP server. UW is sometimes regarded as old, slow, and not entirely secure. Dovecot is generally regarded as very good for small-to-mid-sized servers. So Dovecot it is.

Having settled on Dovecot, you need the following packages installed: 
    apt-get install dovecot dovecot-common dovecot-imapd
Dovecot's configuration file is /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. Here are all the values I set: 
    protocols = imaps
    imaps_listen = *
    ssl_disable = no
    disable_plaintext_auth = yes

    ssl_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.crt
    ssl_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/dovecot.key

    login = imap
    login_process_size = 32
    login_process_per_connection = no
    login_processes_count = 1
    login_max_processes_count = 5
    login_max_logging_users = 5
    imap_process_size = 32

    max_mail_processes = 25
    mail_extra_groups = mail

    default_mail_env = mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

    auth = default
    auth_mechanisms = plain
    auth_userdb = passwd
    auth_passdb = pam
    auth_process_size = 16
    auth_user = root
    auth_count = 1
Since the server is pretty much just for me, I greatly reduced the number and sizes of processes so as not to use too much memory.

The reason auth_mechanisms lists only plain is because using a more secure authentication method isn't necessary since all server/client communication is encrypted via SSL anyway. (To configuring SSL and get the files for ssl_cert_file and ssl_key_file, see: Configure SSL certificates.)

[Advanced tab]
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Configuring Apple's Mail client

Configuring Mail is straightforward. Create a new account and configure it using the "obvious" settings for Email Address, Incoming Mail Server, etc., but under the Advanced tab:
  1. Check Use SSL (the Port should change to 993).
  2. From the Authentication pop-up menu, select Password.
That's it.

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Last updated: May 10, 2005