Question about password field in passwd-file

[J Doe]

> On Jul 7, 2018, at 2:12 AM, Aki Tuomi <aki.tuomi at dovecot.fi> wrote:
> 
> you can add nopassword attribute to the end. See https://wiki.dovecot.org/PasswordDatabase/ExtraFields
> 
> 
> ---
> Aki Tuomi
> Dovecot oy

Hi Aki,

Thank you for your reply.

I have two questions regarding this:

1.  Is the “nopassword” attribute the same as specifying a null password field by itself ?  The documentation at
[1] seems to suggest that having a null password AND specifying “nopassword” will allow someone to
authenticate with _no_ password:

    “nopasword: if you want to allow all passwords, use an empty password and this field.”

Farther down, the page seems to indicate that the “nologin” attribute is what I am looking for:

    “nologin: User isn’t actually allowed to log in even if the password matches . . .”

Or possibly “noauthenticate”:

    “noauthenticate: Do not perform any authentication . . ."

2.  Is “nologin” functionally equivalent to specifying no password in the password field ?  I am assuming that
setting a null password (even without “nologin”), prevents login with ANY or NO password as a blank field
would default to a {CRYPT} scheme and a call to crypt() cannot return a null string.

As background to why I want to do this, I have a server with a basic Dovecot setup that provides 
SMTP SASL AUTH, IMAP and LMTP for Postfix.  For the passdb and userdb, I use the same passwd-style file:

    /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
        userdb {
            driver = passwd-file
            args = /etc/dovecot/passwd
        }

        passdb {
            driver = passwd-file
            args = /etc/dovecot/passwd
        }

I use usernames for SMTP SASL AUTH and IMAP that differ from either: user at example.com or user.  So for
one user, for example, I have:

    /etc/dovecot/passwd
        # SMTP SASL AUTH and IMAP user accounts and passwords
        user_account_1:{PLAIN}password: . . . 

        # LMTP username/e-mail address
        user at example.com:: . . .  :/var/mail/vhosts/example.com/user_account_1

So in the LMTP entry I specify no password between the colons to prevent someone trying to logon via
IMAP using the LMTP username/e-mail address.  Is this correct and: is there a better way to do this ?

Thanks,

- J

Sources:

    [1] https://wiki.dovecot.org/PasswordDatabase/ExtraFields