The following commands will tar and gunzip cyrus IMAP under /tmp.

$ cd /tmp
$ tar -zxvf tar/cyrus-imapd-1.6.24.tar.gz
$ cd cyrus-imapd-1.6.24

When I tried to install cyrus IMAP, I got errors regarding the file com_err.h. My com_err.h was located in /usr/include/et. It needs to reside in /usr/include. Run the following command to make sure it is in the correct location:

locate com_err.h

This will show you where the file is. If it is under /usr/include, you can skip to the next section. If it is in another directory, just copy it to /usr/include. If it doesn't exist, download it here: http://www.ludd.luth.se/~jnilsson/cvsweb/cvsweb.cgi/src/contrib/com_err.

./configure --with-auth=unix

Cyrus requires a user to own its files. The default user is cyrus. The following command adds a user cyrus with the group of "mail"

useradd -g mail cyrus

You'll want to set the password for user cyrus.

passwd cyrus

Type in the password you desire cyrus to have each time you are prompted

$ make depend
$ make all CFLAGS=-O
# make install

That's it! You're ready to configure Cyrus IMAP.