This is the GNU Mailutils package ================================= * Introduction ============== GNU Mailutils is a rich and powerful protocol-independent mail framework. It contains a series of useful mail libraries, clients, and servers. These are the primary mail utilities for the GNU system. The central library is capable of handling electronic mail in various mailbox formats and protocols, both local and remote. Specifically, this project contains a POP3 server, an IMAP4 server, and a Sieve mail filter. It also provides a POSIX `mailx' client, and a collection of other handy tools. The GNU Mailutils libraries supply an ample set of primitives for handling electronic mail in programs written in C, C++, Python or Scheme. At the core of Mailutils is libmailutils, a library which provides universal access to various mailboxes and protocols: UNIX mailbox, Maildir, MH, POP3, IMAP4, Sendmail, SMTP. Mailutils offers functions for almost any mail-related task, such as parsing of messages, email addresses and URLs, handling MIME messages, listing mail folders, mailcap facilities, extensible Sieve filtering, access control lists. It supports various modern data security and authentication techniques: TLS encryption, SASL and GSSAPI, to name a few. The framework is able to work with a wide variety of authorization databases, ranging from traditional system password database up to RADIUS, SQL and LDAP. The utilities provided by Mailutils include imap4d and pop3d mail servers, mail reporting utility comsatd, general-purpose mail delivery agent maidag, mail filtering program sieve, and an implementation of MH message handling system. All utilities share the same subset of command line options and use a unified configuration mechanism, which allows to easily configure the package as a whole. This software is part of the GNU Project and is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation. All libraries are distributed under the terms of the Lesser GNU Public License. The documentation is licensed under the GNU FDL, and everything else is licensed under the GNU GPL. The complete texts of the corresponding licences are included in the files COPYING.LESSER, COPYING and doc/texinfo/COPYING.DOC. * Why use this package? ======================= This package started off to try and handle large mailbox files more gracefully then current POP3 servers did. While it handles this task, it also allows you to support a variety of different mailbox formats without any real effort on your part. Also, if a new format is added at a later date, your program will support that new format automatically as soon as it is compiled against the new library. This package is also released as part of Debian, so you should expect it to compile cleanly on all the platforms supported there. * How to install ================ Please see the INSTALL file in this directory for the generic instructions on how to use configure. The following short summary describes the mailutils-specific configuration options: --enable-debug Compile Mailutils with debugging support. This disables compiler optimizations and adds debugging information to the binaries. --disable-pam Do not build PAM support. By default configure will build PAM support if the host system supports it. Use this option to suppress this behaviour. --disable-pthread Do not build thread-safe libraries. --without-fribidi Do not include fribidi support, even if libfribidi is present. --with-sql=MODLIST Enable support for authentication using given SQL modules. MODLIST is a colon-separated list of SQL modules to use. Available modules are 'mysql', 'postgres' and 'odbc'. E.g., to enable all modules: --with-sql=mysql:postgres:odbc Note that depending on how your SQL systems are installed, this may require adding appropriate directories to the library and include paths, e.g. ./configure LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/mysql/lib -L/usr/local/pgsql/lib' \ CPPFLAGS='-I/usr/local/mysql/include \ -I/usr/local/pgsql/include' --with-sql=mysql:postgres --with-mysql Equivalent to --with-sql=mysql Note that depending on how your MySQL system is installed, this may require adding appropriate directories to the library and include paths, e.g.: ./configure LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/mysql/lib' \ CPPFLAGS='-I/usr/local/mysql/include' --with-mysql --with-postgres Equivalent to --with-sql=postgres You may have to explicitly specify LIBS and CPPFLAGS (see above). --with-odbc[={odbc|iodbc}] Without arguments or with 'odbc' as its argument it is equivalent to --with-sql=odbc. --with-odbc=iodbc enables ODBC support via libiodbc. You may have to explicitly specify LIBS and CPPFLAGS (see above). --with-mh-bindir=DIR By default the MH binaries are installed in ${exec_prefix}/bin/mu-mh. To change this, use --with-mh-bindir option. If DIR starts with '/' it is taken as an absolute path specification, otherwise ${prefix} is prepended to it. --with-virtual-pwddir=DIR Use DIR instead of $sysconfdir/domain as the location of virtual mail domain database. This option is ignored if --disable-virtual-domains is specified. --without-readline Build 'mail' without readline support. --without-unistring Build 'imap4d' without libunistring. Note, that libunistring is necessary for SEARCH command to properly work on multibyte string. The use of this option is therefore discouraged. It is here mainly for development and debugging purposes. --without-gnutls Disable the TLS/SSL encryption via GnuTLS (a Transport Layer Security Library) in IMAP4/POP3 daemons and utilities. --without-gsasl Disable GNU SASL support. GSASL is used by several Mailutils components (notably pop3d and imap4d as well as their client counterparts) for authentification. It is enabled by default if configure detects the presense of GNU SASL version 0.2.3 or later. --with-gssapi Enable GSSAPI authentication. For this to work, you will have to have Kerberos V installed on your system. --without-python Do not build Python interface library. --without-guile Do not build Guile interface library. --with-guile-site-dir[=DIR] Specify the directory to install guile modules to. By default they are installed in $(prefix)/share/mailutils/$(VERSION)/guile. The option --with-guile-site-dir used without argument instructs configure script to install modules to the site-wide Guile directory, where it is easier to find them. This directory is defined as $(guile_pkgdatadir)/site where guile_pkgdatadir is the Guile package data directory as returned by `guile-config info pkgdatadir'. Otherwise, if an argument to the option is given, it specifies the absolute file name of the installation directory for Guile modules. --with-mail-rc=FILE Set the location of the system-wide configuration file for mail utility. FILE must be an absolute filename specification. Default is $sysconfdir/mail.rc --with-mail-spool=PATH Override the location of the mailspool. The default value depends on the system. Usually it is either /var/spool/mail or /var/mail. PATH is either an absolute directory name, or a valid `mbox' URL in the form: mbox:path;type=TYPE;param=N;user= This method allows you to use indexed mailspools. For servers with a really big number of users this may provide a significant speedup in opening the mailbox. TYPE is one of: hash -- The user's mailbox is kept in a subdirectory whose name is determined by hashing first N characters of the user name. There are 256 subdirectories named from 00 through FF. index -- The user's mailbox is located PARAM directories down the `path'. The directories are named after the first N letters of a login name. For example, when N=2 the mailbox for user `smith' is `/var/spool/mail/s/m/smith'. rev-index -- Same as above, except that the last letters are used, thus the mailbox for `smith' will be /var/spool/mail/h/t/smith. This may provide a better average distribution than the `index' method. --with-log-facility=facility Enable logging to the given syslog facility. Default is `mail'. --disable-nls Do not use Native Language Support The following options enable DBM support in Mailutils. DBM support is necessary if you wish to use APOP authentication in POP3 daemon or to use DBM-based mail box quotas with maildag. --with-gdbm Use GNU DBM --with-berkeley-db[=ARG] Use Berkeley DB. If ARG is not specified, configure will attempt to autodetect the database version to use. Unless ARG begins with a digit, it is taken as a library name, without the `lib' prefix and library type suffix, so that specifying --with-berkeley-db=db-3.1 instructs configure to use library libdb-3.1.so (or libdb-3.1.a). Otherwise, if ARG begins with a digit, it is understood as a library version number to link to. In this case configure assumes a Slackware-like installation layout. Thus, using --with-berkeley-db=3.1 tells configure to use library libdb-3.1.so (or libdb-3.1.a) and header file /usr/include/db31/db.h --with-ndbm Use NDBM --with-tokyocabinet Use Tokyo Cabinet DBM --with-kyotocabinet Use Kyoto Cabinet DBM Use following options to disable support for particular protocols or features: --disable-imap Disables IMAP protocol support. --disable-pop Disables POP protocol support. --disable-smtp Disables support for SMTP mailer. --disable-sendmail Disables support for `Sendmail' mailer. --disable-mh Disables support for MH mailbox format. --disable-virtual-domains Disables support for authentication using virtual mail domains. Mailutils is shipped with a set of various utilities, which are built by default. These utilities fall into two groups: a) Server utilities: pop3d, imap4d and comsat. b) Client utilities: frm, maidag, mail, sieve, messages, readmsg, dotlock, movemail mimeview, and MH utilities. The following options disable each group: --disable-build-servers do not build server utilities --disable-build-clients do not build client utilities Each particular program can be disabled using its individual `--disable-build' option: --disable-build-frm do not build frm --disable-build-pop3d do not build pop3d --disable-build-imap4d do not build imap4d --disable-build-comsat do not build comsat --disable-build-maidag do not build maidag --disable-build-mail do not build mail --disable-build-sieve do not build sieve --disable-build-guimb do not build guimb --disable-build-messages do not build messages --disable-build-readmsg do not build readmsg --disable-build-dotlock do not build dotlock --disable-build-movemail do not build movemail --disable-build-mimeview do not build mimeview --disable-build-mh do not build MH utilities Several environment variables affect the configuration. Currently, the only mailutils-specific variable is DEFAULT_CUPS_CONFDIR. It sets the location of CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) configuration directory, which is needed for `mimeview' utility. By default, this location is $sysconfdir/cups. On most sites, however, it may be reasonable to set it to /etc/cups, e.g.: ./configure DEFAULT_CUPS_CONFDIR=/etc/cups ... * Where to report BUGS ====================== Please report any bugs to . We encourage sysadmins who will be using this package to subscribe to this list by sending an email to with the word `subscribe' in the body of the message. Another way to subscribe is by visiting http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-mailutils. * Copyright information: Copyright (C) 2002-2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn. Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions, provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last changed them. Local Variables: mode: outline paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$" version-control: never End: