[Dovecot] Just trying to make dovecot work.

[Peter Snow]

Well you can continue to kid yourselves that the documentation is good 
if you like. The facts say differently. For example, I visit 
http://wiki.dovecot.org/MainConfig for help with the main config and at 
the top of the page it tells me that this page is for version 1.x, so I 
click the link to view the page for 2.x, which takes me to a page saying 
that the page I want has yet to be created. I therefore have no option 
but to refer to the version 1.x documentation. I copy "mechanisms = 
plain" from it but when I restart dovecot, it fails, telling me that it 
is not recognized!

> Finally note that there are literally dozens of "how to install 
> dovecot" guides on the internet 

I noticed that also and did indeed follow many of them. Many of them 
though are for version 1.x but don't say so. Other's just leave you 
hanging. I could and probably will carry on digging on Google and 
probably will find a bunch of erroneous documents among the good ones 
and will have no easy way to tell the difference, but one might expect 
the official website to have the right information to save me this hassle.

By the way, I've now got it running. It wasn't failing due to the user 
being used to run the processes. It was due to misconfiguration of the 
way that the virtual users were setup, which in the end I managed to fix 
by interrogating a server with a working implementation (albeit ver 1.x) 
which was similar to what I needed and copying parts of it's config.

Although mutt now connects to it fine, roundcube doesn't, but don't 
worry. I'm not planning to bother you further.

Kind regards,

Peter



On 08/05/2012 05:38 PM, Ed W wrote:
> On 05/08/2012 06:22, Peter Snow wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have to say that Dovecot is certainly the most challenging piece of 
>> software I've ever had the pleasure of setting up (due mainly to the 
>> reams of largely unhelpful documentation). After 36 almost non-stop 
>> hours reading and trying, I finally end up here. :-)
>>
>> I really would appreciate your help - and many thanks in advance!
>
> Phew, haven't you set yourself up for a hostile response..?
>
> It's only an opinion, but I would say that the Dovecot docs are rather 
> helpful and thorough?  Also dovecot ships with an almost working 
> config out of the box, really you only need to adjust a couple of 
> settings to achieve most setups.
>
> OK, reading your log files, I think this is probably the clue?
>
>
>
>> /var/log/dovecot.log
>> (showing unsuccessful login)
>>
>> ***************************************************************
>> Aug 04 21:32:41 IMAP(peter): Error: user peter: Couldn't drop 
>> privileges: User is missing UID (see mail_uid setting)
>> Aug 04 21:32:41 IMAP(peter): Error: Internal error occurred. Refer to 
>> server log for more information.
>> ***************************************************************
>
>
> I don't use that auth method so I don't want to give you a definitive 
> suggestion, but we can certainly use google to get some ideas:
>     http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dovecot+mail_uid+
>
> Third link down seems to cover your question.  Basically says you need 
> to define the setting listed above, but also why.
>
>
> Note, I think it's easy to level critique against dovecot auth, but if 
> you look for a few moments longer you will see that you are probably 
> just criticising flexibility.  You can use a very wide array of 
> database types to store your auth information and with that 
> flexibility comes the requirement to actually define your specific 
> choice.
>
> Some people run a multi-tennanted system and like to be able to run 
> each user under their own uid, hence that being flexible. Others want 
> to use LDAP or a database to store auth info (I think you can even use 
> both at the same time).  It's even possible to use both at the same 
> time I believe, or to lookup users in one db, and passwords in another.
>
> Note, I don't know your requirements, but you might want to look at 
> some kind of database for your user storage if you have more than a 
> fairly simple installation?  Either LDAP or sql is likely to give you 
> more flexibility than a flat file pwdb, but I don't know your 
> requirements, so just a thought
>
> Finally note that there are literally dozens of "how to install 
> dovecot" guides on the internet that will help you get a working setup 
> with various auth db choices.  Once you understand the big picture 
> using one of those guides you will be able to customise things to a 
> very specific situation
>
> Good luck
>
> Ed W