Which mail server(s)?

[tongro]

I want to set up an e-mail server on a Debian server for a small local network, but I'm confused with the variety of programs available.

I'm looking for something which will:
- Accept outgoing mail, process it, and forward it to an external server
- Download mail from an external POP server, process it, and store it in users' inboxes
- Route internal mail to inboxes
- Provide IMAP access for users

Can somebody suggest a good configuration which would provide those facilities?

Thanks a lot.

[Jeroen]

You want a mail transfer agent, like exim4, for points 1 and 3. You probably want fetchmail for point 2. You want any kind of imap server for point 4, like dovecot, courier, cyrus, or any other.

[tongro]

Thanks for that, Jeroen.

The consensus on the web seem to be that Exim (SMTP) and Dovecot (IMAP) would be good choices for a small installation like mine.

However, it seems that getmail is favoured over fetchmail for POP download. Would getmail be the better choice in this situation?

[Jeroen]

I have no experience with getmail, so I don't know. fetchmail is the only program I knew for this, and is definitely the most well known one. That doesn't say anything about quality and applicability for your usecase though.