           [1]Courier-IMAP - logo by Bas Boudrie <bboudrie@hetnet.nl>

                                                           For the last       
                                                           several years      
                                                           Courier-IMAP's     
                                                           home page has been 
                                                           hosted by          
                                                           [2]inter7.com.     
                                                           Their support is   
                                                           greatly            
                                                           appreciated.       

   Copyright 1999-2004, Double Precision, Inc. This software is distributed
   under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See COPYING for
   additional information.

   Courier-IMAP is a server that provides IMAP access to Maildirs. This IMAP
   server does NOT handle traditional mailbox files (/var/spool/mail, and
   derivatives), it was written for the specific purpose of providing IMAP
   access to Maildirs.

   "Maildir" is a [3]directory-based mail storage format originally
   introduced in the Qmail mail server, and adopted as an alternative mail
   storage format by both [4]Exim and [5]Postfix. Courier-IMAP is popular on
   Qmail/Exim/Postfix sites that are configured to use maildirs. The primary
   advantage of maildirs is that multiple applications can access the same
   Maildir simultaneously without requiring any kind of locking whatsoever.
   It is [6]a faster and more efficient way to store mail. It works
   particularly well over NFS, which has a long history of locking-related
   woes.

   This is the same IMAP server that's included in the [7]Courier mail
   server, but configured as a standalone IMAP server that can be used with
   other mail servers - such as Qmail, Exim, or Postfix - that deliver to
   maildirs. If you already have Courier installed, you do not need to
   download this version. If you install this version, you must remove it if
   you later install the entire Courier server. It's possible to have both
   versions installed, but this will require a delicate juggling act that
   you'll have to learn on your own.

   Courier-IMAP implements several extensions to the basic Maildir mail
   storage format in order to support some additional features, such as
   folders and "soft" quotas. This is done in a way that's backwards
   compatible with the standard Maildir users (although, of course, they will
   ignore the additional features). Other software that understands and uses
   the same Maildir extensions is [8]SqWebMail, and [9]maildrop.

References

   Visible links
   1. http://www.courier-mta.org/imap/
   2. http://www.inter7.com/
   3. http://www.qmail.org/man/man5/maildir.html
   4. http://www.exim.org/
   5. http://www.postfix.org/
   6. http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/
   7. http://www.courier-mta.org/
   8. http://www.courier-mta.org/sqwebmail/
   9. http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/
