[Dovecot] Authentication difficulties

[Benjamin J. Weiss]

Keith Edmunds wrote:

>On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 19:53:04 +0200
>Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>There are constantly pretty basic questions in this list (and in my 
>>inbox) about how to get user authentication work correctly. This means 
>>that the documentation how it all works is either bad, or people don't 
>>find it easily. Any ideas how to improve it?
>>    
>>
>
>Or some people are just lazy. People often take the path of least
>resistance. I'd think long and hard before bothering the author of software
>with basic questions (or any at all, come to that). Over the past couple of
>years I've noticed a big increase in the "lazy culture" in the OS software
>arena in which people do little if any work to try to find the answers to
>their questions (other than ask others).
>
>My suggestion would be to refer all such questions here to the existing
>documentation (you've done an excellent job on the Wiki; let's not waste
>it). You could even say that if people believe that the Wiki could be
>improved then they should improve it or report the deficiency here if they
>are unable to improve it. A boilerplate reply to such questions will be
>quicker for you, could result in deficiencies in the Wiki being fixed, and
>who knows, it may even get the message across the minority who expect free
>(beer) software and free consultancy from the author.
>
>  
>
I disagree.  When I download a package and try to learn it, I do two 
things right off the bat.  First I try the online documentation on the 
website, and then I read the /usr/share/doc files.  While I like dovecot 
quite a bit, I found it deficient in both areas.  When I first installed 
it, I couldn't find anything purporting to be current documentation on 
the website, and at the time I didn't see anything about a wiki.  (Note 
that I haven't been back to the website.)  And the docs that came with 
the software at the time was also out of date and had no links to any 
wiki.  So I ended up doing a whole lot of Google searches to figure out 
what I needed.

Normally I'd volunteer to try and help, but I'm rather busy studying for 
the RHCE and attending to my post- 9/11 military duties.  The best that 
I can hope to do is to finish a script that I've been writing that takes 
a fresh CentOS install and turns it into a secure email server, complete 
with dovecot.

Ben