[Dovecot] Please help me resolve why mail isn't being delivered to virtual users

[Andrew Falanga]

On Jan 10, 2008 5:28 AM, Charles Marcus <CMarcus at media-brokers.com> wrote:

> Andrew Falanga, on 1/9/2008 6:02 PM, said the following:
> >> What should I say? The Dovecot wiki <http://wiki.dovecot.org/> is very
> >> informative. :-)
>
> > Very informative yes, but at the same time it seems to make the same
> mistake
> > all people make when writing documentation.  There are many assumptions
> made
> > that a lot of fundamental knowledge of how mail works is known to the
> > reader.  For example, the term "mbox" is simply used.  It's not really
> > described anywhere (admittedly, that I could find) what mbox is.  It
> took
> > much looking, and in fact one respondent to my question, a week ago,
> about
> > what mbox and MAILDIR were, didn't respond with a dovecot wiki page but
> > instead a wikipedia page.  This really shouldn't be.  This is only meant
> as
> > constructive criticism, I'm not trying to be condemning here.
>
> No offense, but that is just plain dumb. Have you ever heard of google?
> It took me all of 10 seconds to find more articles about these two
> formats than I could read in a week.


I was a little apprehensive about making this message because I thought
someone would take offense to it.  Yes, I have heard of Google (in fact, if
you look at my address, you'll see it's a gmail account).  The point I'm
making is, if I'm reading from dovecot how to configure things, why would I
need to "walk the world" to glean the information necessary?

Put another way, I'm not saying that whomever maintains those pages needs to
completely discuss everything, but some discussion about what is being
referred to is necessary.  If I were to just start talking to you about
something you didn't understand, you'd ask me what it is I'm talking about
and would be very put off if I didn't explain myself but rather said
something like, "look it up yourself."  But what you've said is tantamount
to just that.

If it's expected that the reader knows what the difference between mbox and
MAILDIR is, then a "disclaimer" or sorts should be given at least in the
opening page of the wiki.  Something like, "It's assumed that the reader has
more than a basic understanding of how mail systems work . . ."


>
>
> Anyone who is setting up a mail server that doesn't at least have a
> BASIC understanding of the BASIC things that mail servers deal with
> maybe shouldn't be administering a mail server? Or should at LEAST spend
> a few weeks LEARNING the basics on their own.


I agree and I did have more than a basic understanding.  Prior to becoming a
programmer, I spent 11 years as a network administrator and about 1.5 years
of that time was administering e-mail.  However, and very unfortunate for
me, the extent of my experience working with e-mail for that time was all in
Windoze and Exchange.  Oh, also a package from IPSWITCH, can't recall now
the name, but all of the work was done for me.  One of the reasons I've come
to resent the Windows world.

The flip side is that how else does one gain the experience to do anything
without being exposed to it?  Very often I've noticed from people who know
an attitude of, "Well, you shouldn't be doing this unless you have some idea
of what you're doing."  The problem is, without doing that thing, they can't
have much of an idea of how to do it to begin with.


>
>
> According to your argument, maybe I should complain that Timo didn't
> define the word 'is' on every page he wrote?


I'm afraid you didn't understand my argument.  That could, honestly, be
because I didn't articulate it correctly.  Sorry.

Andy

-- 
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
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