Configuring Synology as a File and Mail Server

These are my technical notes on how to configure a Synology server as both a file and email server.

Background and Rationale

As an outlook user, my old emails are stored in PST files. These files are proprietary to Microsoft and local to a specific computer. To preserve access to my old emails, I wish to store them in an open format that has a higher likelihood of existing 10 or 50 years from now. I also wish to access my archived emails from more than one device, but PST files can only be accessed by one computer at a time.

Moving my archived emails from the PST files into IMAP folders will provide simultaneous access from multiple devices and improve the chances of my emails being accessible in the future.

These technical notes describe how I achieved these using a Synology network storage device.

User Account Naming Limitations

The user accounts for a file server and email server have different requirements. Email user accounts have more restrictions, such illegal characters.

If the same user account will be used for file access (such as in a NAS or Samba share) as email access (such as IMAP), then the user account must be a valid email user account. There may not be spaces in the account, for example.

Same User Account for File and Email

The .Mailbox special folder will be stored in the user's home directory if the account name is the same for file and email access. This is a logical place to store email messages, but restricts account names.  For example, the user account name must not have a space, preventing logical "first name last name" accounts.

Different User Account for File and Email

Different user accounts mean that mail messages will be stored in a different home directory than the user's files. This has the drawback of creating additional home directories, but allows friendly account names to be used.