Author: Robert Hart
Email: hartr@redhat.com
Web Page: http://www.redhat.com
Date Submitted: Mon, Jan 5, 1998
Status: New Entry

Releases: 5.0
Platform: all
Category:  general
Category Listing:  How do I setup POP and IMAP e-mail services?

Issue

Sendmail is the mail transport agent that handles the SMTP 
simple mail transport protocol) - it does not handle POP Post
Office Protocol) or IMAP, which are protocols used by mail clients
to acquire email from another machine.

Response

These protocols are handled by the POP server or IMAP server, 
which run out of inetd - they have nothing to do with sendmail.
Take a look in /etc/inetd.conf and you will find lines like...

#
# Pop and imap mail services et al
#
pop-2 stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd ipop2d
pop-3 stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd ipop3d
imap stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd imapd

(This is in Red Hat 5.0. In 4.x systems they may be slightly different
and may need uncommenting by removing the # at the start of the line).
What this means is that the 'Internet daemon' (inetd - started
automatically in the boot process for runlevels that enable networking - see
/etc/rc.d/rc.X/...) handles the initial request for POP/IMAP services. It
uses the relevant line in /etc/inetd.conf to start the required
service, passing on to the server (eg ipop3d fopr a pop3 request) the
initial contact information it received. For this to happen, you
need to have the relevant server (ipop3d for a pop3 request)
installed. From what you are describing, it would appear that you
don't have this software installed. The pop and imap servers are
in the imap rpm - install that and you should be away and running.

References

(none)