The Cyrus IMAP server differs from other IMAP server implementations in that it is generally intended to be run on sealed servers, where normal users are not permitted to log in. The mail spool uses a filesystem layout and format similar to the Maildir format used by other popular email servers such as qmail, Courier IMAP, Dovecot, etc. Cyrus IMAP's spool format is said to have improved performance and scalability to Maildir, and is stored in parts of the filesystem that are private to the Cyrus IMAP system. Users can access mail through the IMAP/IMAP-S, POP3/POP3-S or KPOP protocols. Software maintenance is one of the activities in software engineering, and is the process of enhancing and optimizing deployed software (software release), as well as remedying defects. ... Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ... A software release refers to the creation and availability of a new version of a computer software product. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining. ... A software release refers to the creation and availability of a new version of a computer software product. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... July 11 is the 192nd day (193rd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 173 days remaining. ... An operating system (OS) is a software program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... A cross-platform (or platform independent) programming language, software application or hardware device works on more than one system platform (e. ... A Mail Delivery Agent (MDA) is software that accepts incoming e-mail messages and distributes them to recipients individual mailboxes (if the destination account is on the local machine), or forwards back to an SMTP server (if the destination is on a remote server). ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... This page as shown in the AOL 9. ... The Internet Message Access Protocol (commonly known as IMAP, and previously called Interactive Mail Access Protocol) is an application layer Internet protocol used for accessing email on a remote server from a local client. ... Maildir is a format for an e-mail spool that does not require file locking to maintain message integrity because the messages are kept in separate files with unique names. ... qmail is a mail transfer agent that runs on Unix. ... The Courier mail transfer agent (MTA) is an integrated mail/groupware server based on open commodity protocols, such as ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP, SSL, and HTTP. Courier provides ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, webmail, and mailing list services within a single, consistent, framework. ... Dovecot is: a type of building, also known as a dovecote the name of a secure POP and IMAP server This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The Internet Message Access Protocol (commonly known as IMAP, and previously called Interactive Mail Access Protocol) is an application layer Internet protocol used for accessing email on a remote server from a local client. ... Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) is an application layer Internet standard protocol used to retrieve email from a remote server to a local client over a TCP/IP connection. ...

The Cyrus IMAP server supports server-side mail filtering through the implementation of a mail filtering language called Sieve. Sieve is a language that can be used to create filters for electronic mail. ...

The private mailbox database design gives the server large advantages in efficiency, scalability, and administratability. Multiple concurrent read/write connections to the same mailbox are permitted. The server supports access control lists on mailboxes and storage quotas on mailbox hierarchies.

History

Prior to 1994, Carnegie Mellon University used the locally-developed and non-standard AndrewMailSystem (AMS) for its email communication needs. Originally written in the early 80s as part of the Andrew Project, it was very advanced for its day. However, it had major scalability issues. It was also desired to move to a standards compliant mail system that met or exceeded the feature set of AMS with an emphasis on disconnected operation and scalability. Scalability was sought both in simultaneous online accesses and large mailboxes. Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ... The Andrew Project, also known as Andrew User Interface System (AUIS), is a set of tools that allows users to create and distribute documents containing a variety of formatted and embedded objects. ...

The Cyrus Project was started at Carnegie Mellon in 1994 to attempt to meet these goals. The following are some documents that date from that era and describe the original goals of the project. As such they may be somewhat out of date.

• Cyrus Project Goals
• Cyrus Technology Overview

The first year that all of Carnegie Mellon's incoming freshmen were placed on the Cyrus server was 1998 (class of 2002). In December of 2001, bboard access (which had been being mirrored from AMS to Cyrus), was cut over to Cyrus completely. AMS was finally phased out in May of 2002.

As development on the project progressed, it became clear that further scalability was required, in addition some additional reliability was desired beyond that which would be provided from a single machine configuration. To meet these goals, the CyrusMurder was developed, and after several revisions was deployed to Carnegie Mellon in the summer of 2002.

SOURCE -- RobSiemborski - 24 Jul 2003

External link

• Home Page
• Benchmark between different IMAP servers