Re: [Dovecot] RfE: use HOSTNAME environment variable in hostpid_init()

[Timo Sirainen]

On Aug 13, 2008, at 4:42 AM, Heiko Schlichting wrote:

All parts of dovecot except deliver uses the result of hostpid_init() in

src/lib/hostpid.c as a hostname which only asks gethostname().



   getenv("HOSTNAME");

and uses the hostname of hostpid_init() as a fallback.

deliver honours environment variable HOSTNAME in src/deliver/ deliver.c:

Well, this is actually trying to use the hostname setting from dovecot.conf. The settings just happen to get passed in environment.

Wouldn't it be consequent to evaluate the environment variable HOSTNAME in

hostpid_init() with fallback to gethostname() and remove the special

to all childs in this case.

behavior from deliver? The dovecot master process should export $HOSTNAME

Another alternative would be to make the hostname setting global in dovecot.conf and have imap processes use that.

Dovecot uses the hostname as part of Maildir file names and gethostname() is not fully qualified on all operating systems (it is on IRIX but not on Linux). But unqualified hostnames are not unique and it is frequent that

dovecot hosts are named "mail" oder "imap" as hostname. To distinguish

Maildir files as well.

between mail.domain1.com and mail.domain2.net would be easier if dovecot evaluate $HOSTNAME in all case not just deliver as program imap can create

I always thought that hostnames were unique within the installation everywhere even without the domain part, and the domain would just waste disk space in the filenames (and dovecot-uidlist)..

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