On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Andrew Falanga wrote:
I have to admit that I'm not quite sure why no one has responded to me about this one. If I'm not providing enough information or incorrect information please tell me. It's quite important that this e-mail system be working.
Well, I can try to help. In general that's what we'll all do, but we have other things to do in our lives, too. (-:
Zeroth question: Why use virtual users rather than regular-old UNIX users? The regular way requires much less configuration, after all!
I have created a system user ID called "vmail" which is referenced in my PostgreSQL database for UID/GID stuff. All virtual user home directories and INBOXes are made owner "vmail" and group is "users."
First question:
If you do 'su - vmail -s /bin/sh' you will get a shell running as user vmail. Run 'deliver' with the arguments it takes to deliver to a target user; does mail get delivered?
If not, we better fix that first!
Originally, I had my sendmail "/etc/mail/aliases" file setup to "map" all mail sent to these virtual users to the system user "vmail." However, none of the virtual users were getting any mail and vmail was just getting swamped. After doing more digging, I found that I just didn't understand the home directories and INBOX, mbox and such. That's what drove me to configuring what's in there now.
Now, following directions on this WIKI page: http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA/Sendmail?highlight=%28deliver%29 I'm still unable to get the e-mail working for them. Continually, sendmail bails with errors saying it, "Can't create output." Because I am using *.mc files, I made a new *.m4 file as directed in /usr/share/sendmail/cf/mailer.
Can you turn up the verbosity from sendmail?
Dovecot does allow the virtual users to login. In fact, when I did, the first time, there appears a "mail" directory in their home directories after login. This would indicate to me that the login was successful. Further, I cut/pasted a message sent to one of the virtual users from the vmail INBOX (/var/mail/vmail) into the virtual user's INBOX (/var/mail/jdunkin). Then, logged in as this virtual user and ACTUALLY got the mail. I know this stuff works. What must be done to make sendmail do its thing for deliver?
So it sounds like Dovecot is fine and this is a sendmail question.
We can try to help, but I don't use Sendmail (I do use Dovecot...), so it's not clear that we'll be able to.
What is necessary to fix this situation?
Reply with answers to 0 and 1 and we'll see where we can go.
-- Asheesh.
-- People are going to scream bloody murder about that. -- Seen on linux-kernel