[plug] imap & pop3 servers

[Mark O'Shea]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 02:05:32PM +0800, Tim Bowden wrote:
> > Unless you are going to have john at domain1 and john at domain2 who are  
> > different people,
> 
> That's the bit I'm not sure about yet.  If I can nail that down I guess
> I may be able to avoid the potential complexity.  Of cause that also
> means all users will have a valid address at all domains handled by the
> system.  Time to work out specific requirements.
Even if you do have the same address at different domains dovecot is a
mechanism for users to acces their mailbox via pop3 or imap, all it does
is access a mailbox.  Deciding what goes into that mailbox is up to the
mta and supporting tools.  Just because you are sending an mail to
john at domain1 it doesn't mean that this has to end up in the mail box of
a user with username john.  In fact if you are using virtual users with
a ldap or SQL database backend that don't directly map on to unix users
you can call them john at domain1 if you want to save confusion.  You do
need however to configure your mta to deliver the mail where dovecot
expects to find it (and the same goes here, there is no reason why email
for john at domain1 can't end up in jane at domain2's mailbox.  No technical
reason that is, John may not be keen on this).


> Yes, that's what I normally do, but If the domains need to be completely
> separate the whole mail process needs to be done outside of shell
> accounts.  I'd prefer not to go there if I don't have to, so if I can
> I'll keep it simple.
No it doesn't *need* to be done outside shell accounts.  There is no
reason why john at domain1 can't have his email delivered to the spool of
unix account john and john at domain2 have his delivered to the spool of
unix account john2.

Whatever you decide to do make sure you think about it carefully and
standardize it if you are going to be setting up more than a few
accounts.  Also script everything, including the decision on usernames.
Otherwise you might find yourself spending ages doing something which
should take a few seconds.

Regards,
-- 
Mark