[Dovecot] why dovecot try to access the uses's home?

[Timo Sirainen]

On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 17:02 +0100, Farkas Levente wrote:
> i already read all the wiki and test it. i found in the wiki (which is 
> not documented in the example conf file) that the static user database 
> has both mail and home param, but even i try to set both dovecot try to 
> access the home. 

"mail" setting can only be used to override default_mail_env. The reason
why Dovecot doesn't just chdir() into the directory pointed by "mail" is
that Dovecot doesn't necessarily know how to parse it. And it may not in
fact even contain a directory at all, eg. "/var/mail/user" works as a
mail, Dovecot will then default to ~/mail directory.

Actually, if you just don't let Dovecot know the home directory at all,
it defaults to chdiring into /tmp.

> so it's clear for me that what you called home is the 
> chroot directory. but in this case imho it should have to called to 
> chroot and not home (with a comment if the maildir is under the user's 
> home than it can be the user's home). 

Um... No. By default there is no chrooting anywhere and chroot directory
may be higher than home/mail directory. eg.:

chroot = /home
home = /home/user
mail = /home/user/mail

> in this case i add a new variable %c as the chroot directory. 

If you chroot, the chroot directory is always /, so it's a bit
pointless :)

> as i read the list i found this is a very 
> anoying naming (as it's a problem for others too), since home is used to 
> be the user's home directory and dovecot has nothing to do with it.

I can't really think of what else to call it, suggestions welcome.
Dovecot just needs a directory where it read+exec access to do some
things, and it's not necessarily the mail directory.

I forgot to mention that besides chdir()ing, if you happen to use
rawlogging it writes them to ~/dovecot.rawlog/ directory.

> anyway it'd be useful to explain in the wiki, what is:
> default_mail_env
> valid_chroot_dirs
> mail_chroot
> user database's home (home in static, homeDirectory in ldap)
> user database's mail (mail in static, MAIL env in ldap)
> since it's not clear to me whether mail_chroot or user database's home 
> is the chroot. 

mail_chroot is the default chroot directory. You can override it for
specific users by adding "/./" in the middle of home directory, eg.
"/home/user/./mail" chroots into user's home directory.

I guess Wiki would need some separate page about chrooting describing
how it works. (someone please write :)

> whether default_mail_env or user database's mail is the 
> where dovecot search for mails or they are redundant or equivalent or...?

database's mail overrides default_mail_env if given.

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