[Dovecot] adding new user to dovecot

[Sven Kirmess]

Kartik Vaidyanathan wrote:
> Well one major doubt that was prevailing was that do
 > i need to create a system account for each person in
 > order to send/receive mails, and from both
 > (Sven Kirmess & Johannes Berg ) your mails i gather
 > it is a must.

That's not correct. Take a look at http://wiki.dovecot.org/.
They have an example with "Virtual user support with OpenLDAP"
and "Virtual user support with PostgreSQL". You either use
LDAP or a PostgreSQL database to store the mail users. The
mail can then be stored in any directory.

> The software that i am creating , which is going developed
> in JSP, will take a new users name and password and create
> a account for him by executing a shell script in my linux machine.

Should be possible. You have to create the account in SQL or LDAP
with that script...

 > I assume yahoo also does something similar to this to
 > create new mail boxes for any new user.

You use the mailbox for the mailing list archive?

> In fact this very mail that i have received from you is
> because i have subscribed to the dovecott mailing list.
> How do you think dovecott has been able to accomplish this.

That's done by the mail delivery agent (sendmail, postfix).
If you just have to send a mail to each recepient you do not
need an IMAP server.

> 2.Will the mail server support me in anyway by giving me some
 > functionality to add users, thereby creating maildir's
 > (imap) for the users.

No. You have to add the user to the database (LDAP, SQL or
/etc/passwd) and create the directory yourself.

> 3.Dont I need to know the admin login and passwd, to
 > create users?

Yes and no. You need either the root account to create an
entry in /etc/passwd or a user which is able to write to SQL or
LDAP. Depending on which database you use.

> 3.Lastly i know this is not that prevalent a question ->
 > I was told mail man does a similar job as to what my
 > software will do. Do you know how mailman works (or even yahoogroups)?.

You probably should ask in as mailman group. They might
know better. I will explain how majordomo does this. Majordomo
is abother mailing list software (Probably not the best one,
but the one I know).

In the /etc/aliases file (which belongs to sendmail, postfix
or whatever is your MDA. This files does _not_ belong to dovecot.)
there is an entry like this:

dovecot:             :include:/usr/local/majordomo/lists/dovecot

Then, the file /usr/local/majordomo/lists/dovecot contains a
list of all the persons subscribed to this mailing list. One
email address per line. The MDA does send each mail sent to
dovecot individually to each entry in the
/usr/local/majordomo/lists/dovecot file. The mailing list software
does now manage the /usr/local/majordomo/lists/dovecot (adding and
removing users). To create a new list, you have to add an entry
to /etc/aliases.

Please let me know if the answer does not match to your question. ;-)


Sven