[Dovecot] some basic questions

[David]

>> B) I have a problem with storage-abusers & really want the carrot-stick
>> quota system my favorite ISP, Panix, has. You get N bytes {or messages,
>> I can live with either/both} and when you get near, you get nagged until
>> you solve it.
>
>I personally use filesystem quotas.  with this, if the user goes over
>quota they are no longer able to receive email.  my current setup will
>permfail incoming mail if the system is unable to store it with an error
>stating "user over quota."  this is my preference.

Politicaly, this will not fly. The big offender is the PHB.


>> When you exceed quota, you get no more incoming mail, just nagging. It's
>> shunted aside until you make room. After D days, if it's still there,
>> the shunted mail is returned.
>
>if you use dovecot LDA (deliver) then this is the default (possibly
>non-configurable) behavior.  deliver returns a TEMPFAIL if it cannot
>write the new mail to user's storage device.  this is at least the case
>for filesytem quotas.  if you're going to have strictly virtual users,
>you'll need to use something like maildir quotas which may have
>different behavior.


I'm still trying to grok the +/- aspects of virtual users...
  

>> C) Password changes. How can I have user-changable pw's, with
>> crack/sanity checking of the new ones? Do I have to have accessible
>> shell accounts on the box for each user? [argh]
>
>To my knowledge, dovecot (or rather, most IMAP/POP servers) does not
>handle password change requests. I know that early versions of Eudora
>had a "Change Password" option, I'm not sure if that's still there but
>that option is not common in modern email clients.

It is there....


>You'll need to choose your user management tools properly according to
>your needs. (i.e. do you use LDAP or MySQL for your backend database?
>what types of management tools are provided with each? will you have to
>provide your own tools? etc)

All open questions... One thing that occurs to me a giving them shell 
accounts, but making the shell 'passwd'

>It's not the cleanest solutions, but I personally just create real user
>accounts on my system (i don't have the need to distinguish by domains
>however) with a shell that prevents logins but allows IMAP/POP
>connections.  I then use a plugin to squirrelmail to allow the users to
>change their passwords. 

better!!
  
Thanks...