Re: IMAP server options in pkgsrc

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

(I'm guessing enough people do or want to use mail that this is more
helpful than spamming people's inboxes.)


Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> writes:

>> I just added to dovecot.conf
>> 
>>   !include_try local.conf
>
> That sounds good. I am a bit confused as pkgsrc installs an empty
> configuration that is *huge* and probably mostly consists of commented
> out default values - can I just rm -rf that and start with a single
> dovecot.conf file? doveconf -n is also quite huge:

In general I think programs should operate with minimal config and
default config files should be tiny, but upstreams don't listen to me
:-) The style of huge default config files which are documentation is
regrettable.  But it's easy to work around.

My dovceconf -n is only 40 lines (on a configured server that actually
works).

> My main initial problem is confusion between the "dovecot" user that
> pkgsrc creates automatically and the tuturials all talking about a "vmail"
> user that I need to add manually.

pkgsrc creates two users:

  dovecot:*************:1001:1001::0:0:Dovecot IMAP/POP3 user:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
  dovenull:*************:1002:1002::0:0:Dovecot login user:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin

and uses dovecot for some daemons

  dovecot    1575  0.0  0.0   23916   2520 ?        I    Sat10AM 0:00.43 dovecot/anvil 
  dovecot    1885  0.0  0.1   26532   3164 ?        I    Sat10AM 0:00.74 dovecot/stats 
  dovecot    8619  0.0  0.1   32768   3380 ?        I     2:36PM 0:00.01 dovecot/auth 

and then dovenull for imap/login (which also have an associated imap
process with the uid of the user).

I have no vmail user, but I have mail only for a small number of
usernames, all of which exist in /etc/passwd.  Several of them are not
allowed to log in, but they have uids and homedirs and thus a
place/ownership for ~/IMAP.

There is also a way to have virtual users, which means they are not
associated with a unix uid.  That may be what the vmail user is about.
See virtual(8) for postfix and
https://doc.dovecot.org/2.3/configuration_manual/virtual_users/

I could have have set up my mail-only users using a database to hold
them instead of /etc/passwd with /sbin/nologin and * for pw, but given
that they are one-off creation, even if now several, that never seemed
like something to do.