Actually I now tried to follow slavishly one other HowTo from the
dovecot.org "official (??? really??? ) web site:
The VirtualUserFlatFilesPostfix
<http://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/VirtualUserFlatFilesPostfix?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=linkto%3A%22HowTo%2FVirtualUserFlatFilesPostfix%22>
HowTo...
As an example of my woes: I hit a snag here when I got to the
Mail Location and Namespaces
bit. The config seems a bit confusing in that the public namespace
config says
location = maildir:/var/vmail/public:LAYOUT=fs:INDEX=~/public
but the comments on the next line talks about
User Home directory structure:/var/vmail/<domain>/<user>/
I personally want the vmail user under /export/home/vmail, but that's not the
confusion here. Isn't the<domain> part supposed to
part of the "location" spec in the public namespace settings?
Or what am I missing?
Postfix has at least two books that have been proofread, but it doesn't look as
if people proofread or vet the dovecot documentation wiki.
Or is there something better to read than the HowTos, for a beginner?
On 2012-07-21 13:07, Hans J. Albertsson wrote:
On 2012-07-21 12:35, Charles Marcus wrote:
On 2012-07-21 5:24 AM, Hans J. Albertsson
<hans.j.alberts...@branneriet.se> wrote:
Also, Sorry if I sound like a whining kid: I am new to dovecot and
postfix, but I was a software support engineer for Sun for ages, and I
should really be able to manage this if I just had some consistent and
non-confusing HowTo or Tutorial to follow as a first try.
1. Which 'HowTo' were you following?
2. If it wasn't the dovecot 'official' docs on the wiki, try those:
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/
I followed the
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/ ->
HOWTOs, examples and tutorials
<http://wiki2.dovecot.org/#HOWTOs.2C_examples_and_tutorials> ->
_A simple virtual passwd file installation
<http://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/SimpleVirtualInstall>_
HowTo.
$random_howtos on the internet is not the way to build a secure mail
server.
Some of the wiki2 docs still have some v1 cruft in them, but for the
most part they should be all you need (along with asking questions
here for clarification), and it is a wiki - anything that you
encounter that you find confusing or incomplete, by all means come
here for clarification, and then update the wiki to help others who
encounter the same issues as you.
You haven't even provided the most basic of details of the problem(s)
you're having (like, for example, OS/platform, dovecot -n output,
logs exhibiting the problem(s), etc...
First, take a step back, and start with one thing at a time (testing
and making sure each step is working as expected before moving to the
next one)...
1. install postfix, secure it, and get it delivering mail to at least
one (test if desired) virtual domain/users maildirs using its
built-in virtual delivery agent,
Done, tested, works.
2. add dovecot into the mix to serve up the users mail,
And that's where I get lost: I keep fiddling back and forth wondering
where I am...
I suppose I should instead think like this: (comment, please!)
Read the HowTo
Look at the text chunks
For each element, find where that happens in conf.d, and do it
there, with the minimum change possible
And then the LDA and later LMTP. I suppose if one succeeds in getting
the LDA working, one can then move over to LMTP, with less effort?
3. switch to the dovecot delivery agent (I recommend LMTP, but at a
minimum use the Dovecot LDA),
OK.
4. enable dovecot-sasl,
5. integrate dspam,
6. integrate mailman
Obviously, each step requires you to know how you want things to work
- ie, do you want to provide POP+IMAP, or only IMAPS access, etc...
Last - to answer the one specific complaint that you had - dovecot
will use all of those separate config files in the conf.d directory,
or you can put all of your settings into one config file, the choice
is yours - see the wiki for details:
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/BasicConfiguration
