[Dovecot] best choice of user database file to work with postfix?

[Phil Howard]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 5:45 PM, Heiko Schlittermann <hs at schlittermann.de>wrote:

> Hello Phil,
>
> Phil Howard <ttiphil at gmail.com> (Mi 21 Apr 2010 16:32:36 CEST):
> > I'm setting up a Postfix and Dovecot combination.  What I want to do is
> have
> > a user database that (1) is not running from some engine (so not LDAP or
> SQL
> > or such) ... and (2) is completely disassociated from system users (e.g.
> > most email users are not in /etc/passwd and most /etc/passwd users are
> not
> > email users).  Ideal would be a one-file solution, which can be managed
> by
> > text editing or simple command line tools.  But what I want is ONE file
> that
> > both Postfix (for valid recipients) and Dovecot (for user login
>
> A recent demonstration of a German postfix expert used a sed-Script to
> convert (basically cut everything behind the first „:“) the dovecot
> passdb file to a postfix readable text file (and convert this to a
> hash(?)).
>

Dozens, maybe millions, of ways to do that.  The "cut" command might be
enough.  I do stuff in C, Bash, Pike, Awk, and even a little Python (just
started learning it), as needed.  I'd just integrate this copying and
conversion into the script used to add mail users.


I'm not sure, if postfix really can't read a passdb (passwd-like) file.
> Probably it (postfix) isn't flexible enough for doing this, or the
> expert didn't want to show it.
>

It has the code to parse it.  It just assumes a specific file location (e.g.
the Unix system file /etc/passwd).


As an exim user I'd suggest using exim - and enjoing real flexiblity ;-)
> The solution I'd prefer is (d) - it makes your exim independend on the
> userdb/passdb used by dovecot, you're just talking to the auth-master.
> (Something I'd implement additionally is a „softfail“ (4xx error) in
> case the socket is not usable.)
>

I'm already more familiar with Postfix.  It's Dovecot and IMAP that's new to
me right now.  I can make this work in Postfix.  But I'm just checking for
shortcuts I don't otherwise see.