[Dovecot] system v. virtual mailboxes, was Re: Thunderbird problem

[Phil Howard]

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 02:28, Frank Cusack <frank at cusack.net> wrote:
> On 6/30/10 6:11 PM -0400 Charles Marcus wrote:
>>
>> That's just plain silly. Virtual users are extremely simple to setup, no
>> need for MySQL unless you have a bunch.
>
> I agree. I am always in favor of virtual users, it just gives you a lot
> more flexibility. I find system users MORE complicated to setup, actually.
> You have to worry about system security in addition to IMAP stuff.  You
> always have to refactor things down the road and starting off with system
> users just makes it more unpleasant.

I find a system-user scheme more complicated only when there is not a
one-to-one relationship between the system user base and the usernames
in one domain.  I tend to use a non-system-user scheme more, now,
because of things like having different sets of users in different
domains, where, if not now, possibly in the future, a LHS will
conflict with a system user, meaning I have to map the relationships.
In cases where there is one domain and LHS will be the same as the
system user forever (about 3 to 5 years in internet time), I'll use
system users (with role accounts either forwarded or as real system
users, depending on need).  Otherwise, the multi-domain,
multi-user-set, all stored under one system user, scheme (that I don't
like to call virtual because there is nothing virtual about it once
you avoid thinking in terms of system users) works quite well.  A
hybrid, where one or more domains are designated for system users,
could still coexist with the multi-domain scheme.