[Dovecot] Postfix LDA vs the Dovecot LDA + other quetions

[Linux Advocate]

thanx timo, u were right. i am confusing things.

vmail needs to exist as a unix user (nologin priveleges) not as a virtual user.
just give ownership of the folders to vmail...  since postfix LDA doesnt need to acccess the folders anymore...

right? will test dovecot lda and report back.

> > 
> > Ok. but its amazing that dovecot can deliver as vmail, a user who doesnt 
> exist.....how does it accomplish this?
> 
> Huh? Maybe you're confusing some concepts. Let's see..
> 
> vmail = UNIX user = typically in /etc/passwd. Postfix's pipe program looks up 
> the UID number based on the UNIX username. Typically from /etc/passwd. Then it 
> sets the deliver process's UNIX UID to this number.
> 
> Dovecot deliver then reads the config file and looks up the destination username 
> from dovecot-auth. Depending on your configuration, it either receives vmail 
> (which gets converted to UID) or the UID number directly. In any case it notices 
> that the process's current UNIX UID is the same as the looked up UID, so it does 
> nothing.
> 
> Destination username lookup is completely different from the UNIX UID, so 
> there's no need to have a "vmail" user listed in Dovecot's passdb/userdb. It's 
> never looked up from there.
> 
> > [root at fwgw vmail]# ls -l
> > 
> > drwx------ 6 postfix postfix 4096 Feb 23 18:25 mesara.biz
> > 
> > Do i need to changes the permissions on the above?
> 
> Yes. Otherwise you'll get a permission denied error.
> 
> You could always just try and see what error messages Dovecot logs. It's really 
> good at giving understandable error messages, especially the latest v1.1 
> version.