[Dovecot] Three oddities

[Timo Sirainen]

On Wednesday, Aug 20, 2003, at 22:24 Europe/Helsinki, Bob Hall wrote:

>> With Linux you could check what home directory imap process really 
>> used
>> by looking at /proc/pid/pwd symlink. I don't know if FreeBSD has
>> anything similiar.
>
> I'm clueless on this. What does /proc/pid/pwd symlink do? Can you give
> an example from the command line?

It would just show current directory of the process. Like:

lrwxrwxrwx    1 cras     cras            0 2003-08-20 23:25 cwd -> 
/home/cras


>>> user_global_uid, then login fails. From maillog:
>>> Aug 20 03:15:15 kongemord dovecot: Logins with UID 0 not permitted
>>> (user rjhjr)
>>
>> Yes, the error message could be better.
>
> Actually, that error message was fine. In combination with the
> documentation, it made it clear what the problem was. That's what
> error messages are supposed to do; point you to something that is
> covered in the documentation.

Yes, but "no UID given" isn't really same as "UID 0". :)

>  My problems with interpreting other
> error messages had mostly to do with lack of documentation. I did
> a lot of googling while I was setting Dovecot up, and while I
> didn't get much helpful info, I did find comments along the lines of
> "interesting, but poorly documented". That "poorly documented" may
> kill your project. People aren't going to be attracted to your
> software if it has a reputation for being poorly documented and
> hard to configure. Error messages by themselves are no good. You
> have to think of error messages as a part of your overall
> documentation.

One of the reasons I haven't yet really bothered to write much is 
because Dovecot is just now changing a lot. Configuration file syntax 
changes, namespaces were added, indexes work differently than before .. 
what else ..

> I want to second the people in other threads who suggested
> setting up some sort of collaborative documentation project.

Well, I installed MoinMoin Wiki, but didn't yet look much into it. I 
guess I should at least remove most of the default pages. There's a lot 
of german text.

http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/dovewiki/