Last week I needed a local IMAP server on Mac OS X Leopard for temporary testing. After struggling with courier-imap for hours, I’ve finally settled on Dovecot . You’ll see below how easy it is to install and configure it.

We’re lucky, Dovecot is available in MacPorts , so we can install it easily: 

$ port install dovecot

It’s time to configure it. We start with the default configuration template: 

$ cp /opt/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot-example.conf /opt/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

Then we can edit the dovecot.conf configuration file as we wish. FYI, here are my modifications: 

--- /opt/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot-example.conf	2010-04-23 14:29:52.000000000 +0200
+++ /opt/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf	2010-04-23 14:51:06.000000000 +0200
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@

 # Protocols we want to be serving: imap imaps pop3 pop3s
 # If you only want to use dovecot-auth, you can set this to "none".
-#protocols = imap imaps
+protocols = imap

 # A space separated list of IP or host addresses where to listen in for
 # connections. "*" listens in all IPv4 interfaces. "[::]" listens in all IPv6
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@
 # SSL/TLS is used (LOGINDISABLED capability). Note that if the remote IP
 # matches the local IP (ie. you're connecting from the same computer), the
 # connection is considered secure and plaintext authentication is allowed.
-#disable_plaintext_auth = yes
+disable_plaintext_auth = no

 # Should all IMAP and POP3 processes be killed when Dovecot master process
 # shuts down. Setting this to "no" means that Dovecot can be upgraded without
@@ -221,7 +221,7 @@
 #
 # <doc/wiki/MailLocation.txt>
 #
-#mail_location =
+mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

 # If you need to set multiple mailbox locations or want to change default
 # namespace settings, you can do it by defining namespace sections.

Before starting Dovecot, we have to create a dummy SSL certificate: 

$ mkdir -p /opt/local/etc/ssl/{certs,private}
$ openssl req -new -x509 -days 3650 -nodes -out /opt/local/etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem -keyout /opt/local/etc/ssl/private/dovecot.pem

And finally, we can launch the Dovecot server itself as root : 

$ dovecot

That’s all!

You can now access your local IMAP server with any client. Here is an example with Thunderbird  :

And if you have problems, the first reflex is to read Dovecot’s logs: 

$ tail -F /var/log/mail.log