[Dovecot] RfE: use HOSTNAME environment variable in hostpid_init()

[Timo Sirainen]

On Aug 13, 2008, at 4:42 AM, Heiko Schlichting wrote:

> All parts of dovecot except deliver uses the result of  
> hostpid_init() in
> src/lib/hostpid.c as a hostname which only asks gethostname().
>
> deliver honours environment variable HOSTNAME in src/deliver/ 
> deliver.c:
>
>    getenv("HOSTNAME");
>
> and uses the hostname of hostpid_init() as a fallback.

Well, this is actually trying to use the hostname setting from  
dovecot.conf. The settings just happen to get passed in environment.

> Wouldn't it be consequent to evaluate the environment variable  
> HOSTNAME in
> hostpid_init() with fallback to gethostname() and remove the special
> behavior from deliver? The dovecot master process should export  
> $HOSTNAME
> to all childs in this case.

Another alternative would be to make the hostname setting global in  
dovecot.conf and have imap processes use that.

> Dovecot uses the hostname as part of Maildir file names and  
> gethostname()
> is not fully qualified on all operating systems (it is on IRIX but  
> not on
> Linux). But unqualified hostnames are not unique and it is frequent  
> that
> dovecot hosts are named "mail" oder "imap" as hostname. To distinguish
> between mail.domain1.com and mail.domain2.net would be easier if  
> dovecot
> evaluate $HOSTNAME in all case not just deliver as program imap can  
> create
> Maildir files as well.

I always thought that hostnames were unique within the installation  
everywhere even without the domain part, and the domain would just  
waste disk space in the filenames (and dovecot-uidlist)..
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