[Dovecot] Confusion when trying to set up a first postfix+dovecot mailserver

[Hans J. Albertsson]

Sorry, you're right: I was stressed out when writing this. I meant mkdir 
.lkml  and mkdir .bugtraq and touch dovecot-shared.
Of course.

It is not the best example, I agree.

Still it should say something like "create the file dovecot-shared if 
you want a shared mailbox named dovecot-shared" (can probably be 
whittled down).

And, yes, if I can get thru setting up dovecot properly ( I know I can, 
it will just take longer ) I will of course do a writeup in the style I 
want to see myself.

When it comes to dovecot, I am a user (that IS a terribly derogative 
term, isn't it?), but I have been actively supporting large farms of 
servers running other forms of mail delivery agents in Sun's various 
OSes since 1986 up to 2008, so I do think I ought to be able to get my 
head around dovecot, too.

I will just have to read the wiki thru, all of it... :-)

On 2012-07-22 12:41, Charles Marcus wrote:
> On 2012-07-22 5:53 AM, Hans J. Albertsson > As an example, to wit, in the
>> http://wiki2.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes/Public doc, there's a line
>>
>> "In the above example, you would then create Maildir mailboxes under the
>> /var/mail/public/ directory."
>>
>> and a colour plate plate showing a directory listing.
>>
>> # ls -la /var/mail/public/
>> drwxr-s--- 1 root mail 0 2007-03-19 03:12 .
>> drwxrws--- 1 root mail 0 2007-03-19 03:12 .lkml
>> drwxrws--- 1 root mail 0 2007-03-19 03:12 .bugtraq
>> -rw-rw---- 1 root mail 0 2007-03-19 03:12 dovecot-shared
>>
>> I am guessing that this means I'm supposed to do mkdir dovecot-shared
>> inside /var/mail/public.
>
> Since it isn't listed as a directory, I'm confused as to why would you 
> guess that?
>
> dovecot-shared is a FILE, not a directory.
>
> The 3rd line below that example on that page specifically says:
>
> "The dovecot-shared FILE..."
>
> It seems to me that you aren't even bothering to read these docs, 
> andit is more like all you want to do is complain that there is 
> nothing already written holding your hand through every possible 
> config that you want to accomplish.
>
> Dovecot is primarily written by one guy (Timo), and he does a 
> remarkable job of both coding and documenting dovecot on the wiki, as 
> well as answering support questions here on the list, and while 
> sometimes there are a few days before he answers many questions, 
> serious bug reports generally get prompt attention, and I don't think 
> I've ever seen him not respond to a question in time.
>
> There is no doubt that dovecot could really use some good, experienced 
> technical writers that could help Timo with documenting dovecot to 
> make it easier to learn by someone new to it, and I'm sure he would 
> welcome that help - are you volunteering?
>
>> Sorry if I'm being horridly difficult, but I think (from experiencing it
>> as a user) dovecot is too good not to have proper tutorials and howtos.
>
> Well, dovecot's intended audience isn't a 'user', it is experienced 
> system/mail admins, but if you are volunteering to help Timo (and the 
> dovecot community) out by improving the wiki documentation and/or 
> creating some of these HowTos from the perspective of someone totally 
> new to dovecot (and maybe even IMAP servers in general), then I am 
> quite certain that Timo will welcome such help.
>
> And as for documentation in the form of books, you cannot compare 
> dovecot to postfix in this regard.
>
> Postfix is one of the most mature, stable projects out there - it's 
> core functionality basically never changes (only the rare bug fixes), 
> and major new features are pretty rare too, so even books written 8 
> years ago are still fairly relevant (and generally are only missing 
> the new features).
>
> With dovecot, things are very different. It is still very young and 
> changing rapidly, and probably will continue to do so as Timo adds new 
> features on his ToDo list. A book written even a year ago would not 
> have much use to someone using the current version today. As it 
> matures and features stabilize, this will change, and I'm hopeful that 
> in a year or two, dovecot will stabilize to the point that some of the 
> talented book writers out there will take on such a huge project - but 
> none of them want to do that right now because dovecot is such a fast 
> moving target.
>