[Dovecot] automounting home dirs
Hi,
I'm running dovecot-1.0.10 on a Solaris 10 server with home dirs automounted over NFS. I have set the mail_location configuration option so that nothing should be written to a user's home dir over NFS but, as far as I can tell, dovecot still by default tries to chdir to a user's home dir when reading mail, although this is not required. This creates additional unnecessary load on a heavily-loaded fileserver and generally slows everything down and creates an unnecessary dependency.
Is there a way to prevent dovecot from causing the home dirs to be mounted?
I found this thread: http://markmail.org/message/umywuppl3vvzfe4p#query:dovecot%20mount%20home%20... which discusses the same problem, but it's quite old and there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer other than hacking the passwd file or the code.
Is there a more elegant solution?
TIA.
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Roger Hale wrote:
I'm running dovecot-1.0.10 on a Solaris 10 server with home dirs automounted over NFS. I have set the mail_location configuration option so that nothing should be written to a user's home dir over NFS but, as far as I can tell, dovecot still by default tries to chdir to a user's home dir when reading mail, although this is not required. This creates additional unnecessary load on a heavily-loaded fileserver and generally slows everything down and creates an unnecessary dependency.
Is there a way to prevent dovecot from causing the home dirs to be mounted?
You can override the home dir returned by your userdb with a variable-expanded, "static" value by adding home to args[1]. You need to be careful and make sure that Dovecot doesn't use anything in the users' home dirs. You may need to set mail_location and/or mail and create a virtual home-dir tree local to the Dovecot server.
Posting dovecot -n output would help.
I'm running dovecot-1.0.10 on a Solaris 10 server with home dirs automounted over NFS. I have set the mail_location configuration option so that nothing should be written to a user's home dir over NFS but, as far as I can tell, dovecot still by default tries to chdir to a user's home dir when reading mail, although this is not required. This creates additional unnecessary load on a heavily-loaded fileserver and generally slows everything down and creates an unnecessary dependency.
Is there a way to prevent dovecot from causing the home dirs to be mounted?
You can override the home dir returned by your userdb with a variable-expanded, "static" value by adding home to args[1]. You need to be careful and make sure that Dovecot doesn't use anything in the users' home dirs. You may need to set mail_location and/or mail and create a virtual home-dir tree local to the Dovecot server.
Thanks. Are you suggesting I add something like the following? userdb static { args = home=/some/random/dir } Incidentally, what I really wanted was for the user's home dir only to be mounted for imap connections (when it could be usefully used), not POP3. I thought by moving the indexes dir this would just happen.
Posting
dovecot -noutput would help.
# 1.0.10: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf protocols: imap imaps pop3s disable_plaintext_auth: no login_dir: /usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login login_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login mail_extra_groups: mail mail_location: mbox:/var/mail/.mboxes/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u:INDEX=/var/mail/.indexes/%u mail_debug: yes mmap_disable: yes mail_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap mail_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap mail_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3 mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/pop3 pop3_reuse_xuidl(default): no pop3_reuse_xuidl(imap): no pop3_reuse_xuidl(pop3): yes pop3_uidl_format(default): pop3_uidl_format(imap): pop3_uidl_format(pop3): %08Xv%08Xu auth default: mechanisms: plain login passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd
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Roger Hale wrote:
Is there a way to prevent dovecot from causing the home dirs to be mounted?
You can override the home dir returned by your userdb with a variable-expanded, "static" value by adding home to args[1]. You need to be careful and make sure that Dovecot doesn't use anything in the users' home dirs. You may need to set mail_location and/or mail and create a virtual home-dir tree local to the Dovecot server.
Thanks. Are you suggesting I add something like the following? userdb static { args = home=/some/random/dir }
passwd instead of static in your case, but yes. Overriding home is only supported in v1.1 or later when the userdb is passwd. You'll need to either update Dovecot or change your userdb driver. If your users only access their mailboxes through POP3/IMAP, you could switch to a single-UID/GID setup with the static driver (which does support setting home in v1.0).
Incidentally, what I really wanted was for the user's home dir only to be mounted for imap connections (when it could be usefully used), not POP3. I thought by moving the indexes dir this would just happen.>
Dovecot runs the imap/pop3 sessions as the logged-in user, so it chdir's regardless of the mailbox location.
participants (2)
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Darren Pilgrim
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Roger Hale