Three solid days of work have given me the ability to both send and receive email using Courier under Linux. Something that takes literally ten minutes under Windows (well, and a pirated copy of various software programs) finally works under Linux.
I succeeded in getting SpamAssassin working to filter my email, too, thanks to these instructions on installing Courier and SpamAssassin. Many praises to this fella.
The first time I did a mail server took me 3 days, I decided in my nievity that I was going to learn sendmail’s cf syntax. 2 days later I built Postfix from source and configured it, then installed a binary UW-imapd and that was that.
cyrus/courier are probably overkill for a single domain, but the time you invested in courier will pay off. I once pulled down courier, compiled it and spent a day just trying to work out what authentication I should use.
I’d say you did well