dbmail

What are the advantages?

Scalability

Dbmail is as scalable as the database system used for storage.

Manageability

Dbmail can be managed by updating the relational database or directory service - without shell access.

Speed

Dbmail uses very efficient, database specific queries for retrieving mail information.

Security

Dbmail doesn't require filesystem access. It's as secure as the database and directory server used.

Flexibility.

Changes in a Dbmail system (adding of users, changing passwords etc.) are effective immediately. Users can be stored in the database, or managed separately in an LDAP server such as OpenLDAP or Active Directory.

How does it work?

DBMail is made up of several components. A normal MTA (Postfix, SendMail, QMail, Exim) is used for accepting messages. The MTA hands the messages over to dbmail-deliver, using a pipe interface, or to dbmail-lmtpd, using LMTP (Local Mail Transport Protocol).

These programs take care of injecting the message into the database. Messages can be retreived from the database using dbmail-pop3d, using the POP3 protocol, or dbmail-imapd, using the IMAP4Rev1 protocol.

Emails are stored in the database. This includes attachments. User information is also stored in the database, so users do not need a system account on machines DBMail is running on.

Components

Available

DBMail is primarily developed and tested on the GNU Linux and FreeBSD platforms. Users have also reported successfull deployments on OpenSolaris, NetBSD and OSX.

DBMail is released under the GNU Public Licence (version 2).

Blog

Migrating from MySQL to PostgreSQL

2012-09-13

Pruning the dbmail_headervalue table

2010-02-13

DBMail on twitter

2010-01-19

Recent changes

master branch

audit signal handling and memory cleanups

2013-03-29

m src/dbmail-imapsession.c
m src/dm_debug.c
m src/dm_mempool.c
m src/server.c
m test/check_dbmail_imapd.c

audit signal handling and memory cleanups

IMAP: use faster query for flag counting

2013-03-27

m src/dm_mailboxstate.c
m test/check_dbmail_mailboxstate.c

IMAP: use faster query for flag counting

IMAP: imaptest fixes

2013-03-01

m src/dbmail-imapsession.c
m src/dbmail-message.c

IMAP: imaptest fixes

3.0 stable branch

merging changes from the master branch

2012-08-08

merging changes from the master branch

IMAP: store cached addresses with quoted names

2012-08-08

m src/dbmail-message.c

IMAP: store cached addresses with quoted names

fix compiler warnings

2012-08-07

m debian/rules
m src/dbmail-message.c
m src/dbmail-message.h
m src/dbmailtypes.h
m src/dm_db.c
m src/dm_http.c
m src/dm_iconv.c
m src/dm_misc.c
m src/dm_sset.c
m src/modules/sortsieve.c
m test/check_dbmail_message.c

fix compiler warnings

especially deprecation warnings from glib