[Dovecot] / vs. </

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 05/17/2014 11:57 AM, Boris wrote:
> 
>> no - < reads a file and without you are supposed to directly
>> paste your certificate in the configuration instead point
>> to a file
> I see. In all other places I know dovecot references files simply with "/" so I 
> still wonder what is so different in this case.
> 

In the other cases, the configurable parameter is supposed to be a path
to a file. So you give it a path, beginning with "/".

The certificate parameter takes  string, so you would have had to
copy/paste your certificate in there. But nobody wants to do that, so
there's an alternate way to read the certificate from a file.

Fictional example: it's the difference between:

  valid_users = user1 at example.com, user2 at example.com,...

and

  valid_users = </path/to/valid/users

The leading "<" means "pretend I typed the contents of this file right
here." If instead you had,

  valid_users = /path/to/valid/users

then dovecot might think you have one valid user named
"/path/to/valid/users."