[Dovecot] Setup Question

Jeff Grossman jeff at stikman.com
Fri Apr 17 18:14:49 EEST 2009


I really want to try and get this plus addressing working correctly with 
Dovecot and Postfix.  After doing some reading I think I am going to 
change my Postfix setup from mailbox_command to mailbox_transport.  I 
have a few questions to make sure I am thinking correctly.  All of my 
users are system users.  Their mail is delivered directly to their 
"/home/<user>/Maildir" directory.  Everything works great and I have no 
problems.  Here is what I am thinking of doing.

   1. Create a new vmail user and group.
   2. Have all mail delivered for each user to the "/home/vmail/<user>/"
      directory.  All mail will be owned by vmail, but that is okay
      since Dovecot is the only thing touching the mail files anyway.
   3. Change the mail_location setting in dovecot.conf to "mail_location
      = /home/vmail/%u
   4. Uncomment the auth_socket_path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
      setting in dovecot.conf
   5. Switch Postfix's main.cf to use "mailbox_transport = dovecot" and
      put the following line in master.cf:
         1. dovecot unix - n n - - pipe
            flags=DR user=vmail:vmail
            argv=/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/deliver -f ${sender} -d
            ${recipient} -n -m ${extension}
   6. Copy the current users mail to the new vmail location.  What is
      the best way to copy it preserving date and time stamps on the mail?

Did I cover all of the steps are am I missing something?  Here is a copy 
of my current dovecot -n output.  Thanks for any help you can offer me.


# 1.2.rc3: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.29-1-amd64 x86_64 Debian squeeze/sid
base_dir: /var/run/dovecot/
protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s
ssl_cert_file: /etc/ssl/certs/ssl.crt
ssl_key_file: /etc/ssl/private/ssl.key
ssl_cipher_list: ALL:!LOW:!SSLv2
disable_plaintext_auth: no
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot//login
login_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir
mail_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/pop3
auth default:
   mechanisms: plain login
   passdb:
     driver: pam
   userdb:
     driver: passwd
plugin:
   sieve: sieve


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