[PLUG] imap server that allows ssl certificate based authentication?

Martin A. Brown martin at linux-ip.net
Tue Oct 27 00:39:41 UTC 2015


Tim and Michael,

> > Courier is v4.9.1 - it was chosen years ago and the decision has 
> > not be revisited. Not that I'm adverse to doing so.
> 
> I recently chose dovecot over courier and it has been working out 
> pretty well.  If it has integrated certificate support and isn't 
> too hard to set up, that might be your best option.  I considered 
> doing that as well, but since my cell phone email client didn't 
> support client certificates at the time, I never followed through.

So, you seem also to be using mutt with dovecot....

  User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30)

> > stunnel would work, I'll weigh it vs coercing imap server to fit my whim.
> 
> In past projects I've always found stunnel to be confusing and buggy.
> There are several versions of it and the newer versions just seemed to
> confuse things more. 

Noted.  I, myself, haven't used it in a few years, but found it 
fairly reliable and flexible when I did use it (though that was a 
few years back).

> Recently I've switched to socat for similar features.  It's far 
> more of a swiss army knife, but also more intuitive for me. 

Agreed!  I love socat!

It does not support client SSL certificate handling, but it is a 
wonderful and lightweight CLI and can also function in a pinch as a 
capable, if modest server.  I love that it can connect to just about 
any kind of file or socket.  So much more flexible than 'nc'.

> I've never looked into using it for IMAP access (and how you'd 
> handle user identity info, or whatever) so it would be a DIY 
> project of sorts, but it is worth looking into.

> > I now have a working system and the improvements will be incremental.
> > 
> > FWIW - this all started when I wanted to run mutt from my laptop 
> > instead of sshing to my server for email.  In past trials I've 
> > found Thunderbird to be slow and ugly and web mail options to be 
> > cumbersome.

I can't necessarily corroborate on the sluggishness point, Michael, 
but I also love console IMAP and mutt is my preferred MUA (even if 
I'm using alpine at the moment).

> sshfs might be an option, though probably slow...

Another viable option for a single user....

-Martin

-- 
Martin A. Brown
http://linux-ip.net/



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