[Dovecot] Lack of external documentation?

[Steve Campbell]

Quoting Jerry <jerry at seibercom.net>:

> On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:27:37 -0400
> Terry Carmen articulated:
> 
> > On 03/15/2012 03:06 PM, Steve Campbell wrote:
> > > Firstly, this isn't meant to be critical, and I realize the subject 
> > > line probably suggest criticism, so...
> > >
> > > I was sort of forced into using dovecot as my imap/pop server due
> > > to upgrading 3 versions of OS on my mail servers. So far, that's
> > > not bad. What surprises me is that one of the first things I
> > > usually do whenever I start using different software is to purchase
> > > a book that seems to suit me. Searching all of the common places
> > > like amazon, ebay, etc for manuals turned up little to nothing on
> > > dovecot.
> > >
> > > I'm wondering why and is this so new that people just haven't
> > > written books about it yet?
> > >
> > > The one thing I'm a little critical of, though, is that trying to
> > > make heads or tails of dovecot by following the online
> > > documentation is a little problematic. I'm constantly jumping to
> > > another page and then back to the original page, and for the most
> > > part, I just don't know enough about it all yet to know what I'm
> > > looking for.
> > 
> > The best docs are on the wiki and this mailing list. If you find the 
> > information in the wiki to be lacking, the best thing you can do is
> > find the solution yourself and/or on this mailing list, and then make
> > a wiki entry so the next person will know how to solve the same
> > problem you had.
> > 
> > Dovecot is a complex piece of software, and understanding some 
> > functionality requires reading the wiki, asking on the mailing list 
> > and/or examining the source code. You can also obtain paid support
> > from these companies: http://dovecot.org/support.html
> > 
> > I'll be the first to admit that complex and specialized
> > configurations are sometimes difficult to figure out, however this
> > list has always been a tremendous amount of help.
> 
> The lack of truly informative documentation has been the Achilles' heel
> of open-source software since its inception. I feel your pain. I have
> always loved a hard copy, i.e. book documenting the subject I am
> studying. Jumping from screen to screen sucks, plus how do I highlight
> a passage on the monitor for future reference? There have been a few
> books written to document Postfix, but to the best of my knowledge, none
> exist for Dovecot.
> 
> -- 
> Jerry â™”
> 
> Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored.
> Please do not ignore the Reply-To header.
> __________________________________________________________________
> 

So many great replies, but I'll pick this one to use as my reply-to since it
mirrors mostly how I feel about my experiences so far when it comes to learning
Dovecot.

I installed a new server, going from Centos 3 to Centos 6. I found that Postfix
was the preferred SMTP server and Dovecot was the preferred imap/pop server. I
gave Postfix my best shot, but didn't really have it tested well enough to stick
with it, so I dropped back to Sendmail, something I'm somewhat familiar with.
I've read multiple versions of O'Reilly's Sendmail books along with the Sendmail
Cookbook. I have to admit that it was these books that made me realize the power
of Sendmail. Post l website to further learn, but I had to get the basics first
to do what needed to be done to get the job into a working server.

Dovecot is an application that probably would work out of the box for me if I
didn't have to use data from the previous server. So I had to use more than the
standard options to make this work. Finding those options was the main gripe I
had with the wiki - there are just so many options to make Dovecot the complete
server. That's a good thing. Just remember, us noobies-to-Dovecot have to
discover all of those options.

I mentioned that I was happy with the wiki and the list when it comes to
answering my questions. But I'm sure the list will get tired of me asking what
must appear to be redundant, simple, obnoxious questions. The  index-like wiki
page is most helpful.

I knew dovecot has been around for a while, but didn't know how mature it was.
The fact that Centos/Red Hat uses it as a default says quite a bit about it's
reliability, so I'll stick with it. One of the the things I was planning on
doing was combining two servers, which services one domain on one server and
services two other domains on the other, into one server, and have the other as
a server-in-waiting. So along comes this dsync thread, and now it appears that
Dovecot might make that all easier. I see all the potential Dovecot has, but
learning it is a little difficult for us new users.

Once I get the hang of it, I'm sure I want need to search for the things I need
to find, but for now, a good book would have been nice and a lot easier.

I give all the praise to Timo that he deserves. (I'm guessing he's either the
developer, the lead guru on the list or something of that stature). I like what
I'm seeing, I'm just not always seeing what I need.

Again, this is not critical in nature. I'm just stating what this particular
rookie is conveying to the list about my experience (and lack of experience) in
getting where I need to be with Dovecot.

Thanks for such a great application, all the great replies and help so far.

steve



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