- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] bleah
by Tom Allison 11 Jun '04

11 Jun '04

Not to be a bitch, but I've asked several times about some basic questions or examples to clarify the essentials for configuration. What do some of the parameters mean? Expecially the ones that are mentioned only one in a paragraph and no where else in the documentation or wiki. (ie: login_process_per_use) And there have been a few others as well. that I won't bother to repeat. But I've been sitting on this list for a while yet and have found that when it comes to configuration, none of the emails posted have been answered or addressed. The closest I got was a suggestion to use views instead of tables in postgres. But technically nothing was ever said about dovecot itself. So I have to ask. Is the sketchy documentation in the source file, the web page, wiki, and limited reponse on the mailing list a matter of "I haven't gotten around to it yet" or a deliberate move to promote the commercial support potential for Procontrol? I've run into this kind of environment twice before (cyrus and razor) and in the case of cyrus they just didn't believe in doing the documentation but suggested I write it myself. That may be the case there as well ("I haven't gotten around to it yet". That's OK but cyrus has the difficulty of no one still not providing any answers to how anything was done, configured, functioned, or why. So documentation was kind of a reverse-engineering project in itself. In the case of razor it's a mix of no time and they would rather support the company than the project. I went back and re-read the emails that I had posted earlier and am pretty sure that they weren't too stupid (ie: how do I test an imap connection), difficult, or obscure (well, maybe one). I'm just trying to find more information on how to correctly configure this server such that I can retain the concept of keeping security in mind. I'm trolling through the archives and there doesn't seem to be much discussion from anyone else. So maybe I'm really stupid and can't do authentication schemes. I'm sure by this point I've really pissed a few people off and for that I mostly apologize. I'm a little bent here myself. It just that I didn't plan on having to set up sniffit to track my IMAP traffic in order to verify that things were actually working securely. I'm going to plug along and do it myself and probably get something to work. I have plain_text authentication working now, but was really hoping to actually get something secure. At this point I really don't expect an answer, but do hope that after 1.0 is released there will be time available to get some documentation in order. IMHO the level of documentation that is available on a software project is critical to it's use.

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[Dovecot] pgsql documentation
by Tom Allison 11 Jun '04

11 Jun '04

From dovecot-pgsql.conf # Examples: # connect = host=192.168.1.1 dbname=users # connect = host=sql.example.com dbname=virtual user=virtual There is a reference to identify the rest of the parameters via libpq in the postgres documentation. From postgres, libpq says the connection environment variables are: hostname:port:database:username:password http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/static/libpq-pgpass.html Should the dovecot-pgsql.conf docs be changed from "dbname=users" to "database=users" ??

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[Dovecot] "virgin" mail accounts
by Christian Balzer 11 Jun '04

11 Jun '04

Hello, I'm willing to swear that with the 0.99.10.4 Debian package in my rather extensive tests with mailbox format dovecot created not only any missing parental directories but also the INBOX file, but the later I can't prove/test now as I upgraded all respective boxes. However 0.99.10.5 will still create (if needed and possible) missing directories for mbox storage, just not an empty INBOX. But with maildir, it will not even do that, from a test with pop3 and imap login attempts to a freshly created account that had not received any mails yet: --- Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3-login: Login: test [203.216.5.92] Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3: I/O leak: 0x8050ce0 (0) Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3: I/O leak: 0x8084aa0 (1) Jun 10 12:58:49 mb01 imap-login: Login: ttest [203.216.5.92] Jun 10 12:58:50 mb01 last message repeated 3 times Jun 10 12:58:50 mb01 dovecot: child 9193 (imap) killed with signal 11 --- It died not very graceful in either case, esp. the later. Unless there are very RFC'ish and imperative reasons, I'd suggest that dovecot creates all missing bits if possible no matter what the storage method or pretends to have encountered an empty mbox file or maildir cur/new respectively. The rationale should be obvious, no frantic user calls about "My mail is not working" when the answer is "Duh, that's because you never ever received one yet". ;) Regards, Christian Balzer -- Christian Balzer Network/Systems Engineer NOC chibi(a)gol.com Global OnLine Japan/Fusion Network Services http://www.gol.com/

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[Dovecot] Scripting
by Nico De Beer - MWEB 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

You metioned previosely that one can do character translation with postgress with mysql you can also do so but can use it as the table name Is there anyway to write something outside dovecot to do the lookup in say c++ Are you ready for Telkom's 10-digit dialling? To find out how this will affect your Internet connection in the not too distant future, go to www.mweb.co.za/ten

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[Dovecot] 2 problems
by Cor Bosman 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Hi all, im testing dovecot as a replacement imap server and noticed 2 problems in 0.99.10.5. if you use dovecot/pop on an account who's quota is fully used, dovecot will ungracefully stop. This will only happen when the account is first accessed by dovecot (for instance, when offering IMAP to an existing userbase using dovecot, or when the index files have inadvertently been deleted). +OK dovecot ready. user scorpio +OK pass xxxxxxxx +OK Logged in. Connection closed by foreign host. The same goes for imap: * OK dovecot ready. . login "scorpio" "xxxxxxx" . OK Logged in. . select INBOX . NO Out of disk space This is a bit of a problem because one of the remedies of solving an out of disk space problem is deleting email, which you cant now. Cor

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[Dovecot] mbox configuration
by Nina Pham 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Hi, I change the dovecot.conf default_mail_env = mbox:/Mail/IMAP/%u/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u After I did the change, I restart dovecot with the hope that folder that I create will be stored in /Mail/IMAP/%u. Then I use Mozzila as my email client and change the IMAP server directory to ~nina/IMAP/ which is the link to /Mail/IMAP/nina/. But then I can not create folder anymore from Mozzila, or view any thing other than inbox. I am still able to see message in inbox since I haven't change the location of inbox. Please help. Nina

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[Dovecot] authentication configuration
by Tom Allison 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

I've included the non-defaulted bits of my dovecot.conf file at the bottom of this email. As I understand my set-up it's using unix authentication methods (/etc/passwd via pam?). Considering disable_plaintext_auth and auth_mechanisms, what exactly is being passed? I was hoping to get auth_mechanism = digest-md5 but that's not working out very well right now. It seems I can only do plaintext authentication. I got stuck on the userdb/auth_passdb settings. Can someone give me an example of how to configure for md5-digest authentication? My current guess is: disable_plaintext_auth = yes auth = digest-md5 auth_mechanism = digest_md5 auth_passdb = /etc/mydigestfile How would I set this for pgsql? auth_passdb = /etc/dovecot-pgsql.conf ### non-default config settings. protocols = imap imaps disable_plaintext_auth = yes login = imap login_max_processes_count = 16 login = pop3 max_mail_processes = 512 default_mail_env = maildir:~/Maildir mailbox_check_interval = 1 auth = default auth_mechanisms = plain auth_passdb = pam auth_user = root

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[Dovecot] configuration
by Tom Allison 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

I've noticed that there are some parameters mentioned in the docs that aren't identified therein (ie: login_process_per_use). Is there a more generic set of docs that can identify what each of the parameters and what they do, or at least something that will allow me a simple how to to avoid embarrasing situations. I supposed I should only settle for ssl based connections (imaps/pops) but I will be open to digest-md5 if I could. I'm also curious to see how I can use pgsql authentication with dovecot. I think this would be great to work with since I'm basing all my postfix settings around postgresql as well. But for now I'm not sure how to use postfix authentication with the file directories I'll need to use for the maildirs (and procmail!).

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[Dovecot] pgsql configuration
by Tom Allison 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

from the pgsql configuration file: # Query to retrieve the password. # # The query should return one row, one column. If more than one row or column # is returned, authentication will automatically fail. # # Available substitutions: # %u = entire userid # %n = user part of user@domain # %d = domain part of user@domain # # Query to retrieve the user information. # # The query must return only one row. The columns to return are: # home - Home directory # mail - MAIL environment # system_user - System user name (for getting user's groups from /etc/group) # uid - System UID # gid - System GID # # Either home or mail is required. uid and gid are required. If more than one # row is returned or there's missing fields, login will automatically fail. # I'm a bit slow here, so if someone could just nod if I'm in the right direction: I want to support IMAP for at least two domains. Therefore I have to use the authentication string of: SELECT password FROM users WHERE userid = '%u' and the user must enter their entire email address for their login name. (I can do this!) I want some portion of these domains and users to be consistent with existing accounts in my /etc/passwd database. I don't expect to use passwd information for the username and password, but I want the information returned for joe(a)domain2.com to be for the user:joe in my passwd file and have his email in /home/joe/Maildir. Similarly, I want others (either fred(a)domain2.com or jane(a)domain1.com) to be (ideally) all driven under a non-local account name and login. For this second one, I'm thinking I need to do something like this in the user information query (this is mostly a guess): for joe(a)domain2.com (/etc/passwd) :: jane(a)domain1.com (no passwd) home - /home/joe --or-- can I use ~/ :: /var/spool/imap/%d/%n ?? mail - maildir:~/Maildir :: maildir:/var/spool/imap/%d/%n ?? system_user - joe :: (a guess -- adduser dovecot-imap to passwd maybe) uid - joes uid (1002) :: dovecot-imap uid (510) gid - joes gid (1001) :: dovecot-imap gid (510) with seperate group This is where I get fuzzy. If someone could help me figure out where I went wrong I would appreciate it. If I did this correctly, then in theory I could pass email delivery to procmail and have one set of rules (/etc/procmail) do some additional filtering for all the email under my domain1.com (spam filtering mostly) and perform a final delivery to maildirs in /var/spool/imap/doamin1.com/jane/ Or am I sleep deprived?

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[Dovecot] dovecot newbie question about "invalid key" problem
by Joakim Verona 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Hello list, I've trying to migrate a small uw-imap server to dovecot. It works somewhat, and speed seems greatly improved, so thats great. However, I get an "invalid key/Internal Error" problem when connectiong to my INBOX with thunderbird. According to google this is a well known problem with mozilla mailers. Dovecot is not lenient with this bug in thunderbird. Is there some workaround for this? I noticed that its possible to turn on some client bug workarounds for outlook. Does the same go for mozilla? I tried one described remedy, which was to delete the account information and re-register the account. This didnt help. The problem seems to be only with INBOX, which I have mapped to /var/spool/mail/<username>, not my other imap mailboxes. Im running gnus as well and the problem doesnt seem to occur there. My configuration: Redhat 9 dovecot 0.99.10.5 (from DAG repository RPM:s) Another question: Would it be possible to run uw-imap on one port, and dovecot on another? Or would that corrupt the mailstores? Regards, /Joakim

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