[Dovecot] Upgrade to 2.0 - Not so smooth

[Marc Perkel]

On 8/16/2010 2:45 AM, William Blunn wrote:
> On 15/08/2010 22:49, Marc Perkel wrote:
>> On 8/15/2010 2:32 PM, Marcus Rueckert wrote:
>>> On 2010-08-15 14:01:25 -0700, Marc Perkel wrote:
>>>> Seems to me that it wouldn't take a lot of code to at lease find if
>>>> they have adduser or useradd.
>>> that is 2 out of many solutions.
>>> and depending of the admin he might create the user in an ldap tree 
>>> or a
>>> nis server.
>>>
>>> also packager dont really like users created from the buildsystem.
>>>
>>>      darix
>>>
>>
>> Perhaps a better error message that says something like:
>>
>> Dovecot needs a user named "dovenull" to work. Please create user 
>> "dovenull" and try again.
>
> No.
>
> The first sentence of your proposed message is FALSE.
>
> On 15/08/2010 17:10, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>> - Dovecot uses two internal users now by default: dovenull and 
>> dovecot. You need to create the dovenull user or change 
>> default_login_user setting.
>
> Dovecot does NOT need a user named "dovenull" to work.
>
> The second sentence is predicated on the first and as such also falls 
> down.
>
> Dovecot needs a user named by the default_login_user setting in order 
> to work. Whilst this defaults to "dovenull", there is nothing to stop 
> you setting it to something else (e.g. "flibble").
>
> The point is that the answer is more of a commentary and the right 
> solution depends on the situation.
>
> Rather than try to squeeze solution summaries into every error 
> message, I would suggest having a link (perhaps into the Dovecot wiki) 
> in the error message, e.g.
>
> Starting Dovecot Imap: Fatal: service(pop3-login) User doesn't exist: 
> dovenull (see http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Errors/NoDefaultLoginUser)
>
> (Note that the above URL is hypothetical.)
>
> Then have a commentary and suggested solutions in the wiki.
>
> Alternatively, the link could rooted at a notional documentation root 
> like:
>
> Starting Dovecot Imap: Fatal: service(pop3-login) User doesn't exist: 
> dovenull (see documentation "Errors/NoDefaultLoginUser")
>
> so that users could refer to a local copy of the documentation rather 
> than encouraging load on the Dovecot wiki server(s).
>
> Bill

Maybe dovecot could use the "nobody" user if dovenull doesn't exist?