Published: Thursday, Nov 28, 2013 Last modified: Wednesday, Oct 2, 2024
There is too much configuration. There is too much state. There are too many options. There are too many dot files. Stuff should just work.
— Rob Pike (@rob_pike) July 26, 2013
The most minimal Dovecot IMAP configuration I could find is:
log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
ssl = no
passdb {
driver = pam
}
userdb {
driver = passwd
}
The default dovecot.sample sucks (>1000 SLOC!!) and so does http://wiki2.dovecot.org/QuickConfiguration.
You need log_path or you won’t be able to understand why dovecot fails to
come up with dovecot.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=89/n/a
typically seen via journalctl --full -f -u dovecot
.
The Dovecot configuration format is a little painful. This won’t work:
passdb { driver = pam }
Nor this:
passdb {
driver = pam }
Feel free to experiment yourself between sudo systemctl restart dovecot
while
tail -f /var/log/dovecot.log
on a large screen.
In my Archlinux system, by default email sanely ends up in ~/Maildir via Postfix handing mail over to Dovecot’s Local Delivery Agent:
$ grep mailbox /etc/postfix/main.cf
mailbox_command = /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver
I could just not run the IMAP part I guess and use mutt -f ~/Maildir/
.
When I use dovecot -n
to get a canonical view of the configuration I get:
# 2.2.9: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 x86_64
log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
managesieve_notify_capability = mailto
managesieve_sieve_capability = fileinto reject envelope encoded-character vacation subaddress comparator-i;ascii-numeric relational regex imap4flags copy include variables body enotify environment mailbox date ihave
passdb {
driver = pam
}
ssl = no
userdb {
driver = passwd
}
That managesieve… stuff is injected from installing the separate pigeonhole package btw.
My Dovecot IMAP configuration goals are:
- Have the most minimal configuration possible. Every LOC counts!
- For sent mail to be in the inbox so I can see my replies inline, in the context of a conversation like Gmail
- To get full text search search working
- To get DSPAM integrated, since I don’t want SPAM and I don’t want Perl on my system ideally
- To get my mailing list traffic in separate folders (I think this is where pigeonhole/sieve comes in), labelled by the listname
- To get SSL stuff working
- To be able to access my mail via Apple IOS client on my Iphone
I want to see Dovecot succeed but there are a couple of obvious problems with it:
- the moinmoin wiki sucks, no git backend. Documentation around the Web is terrible / confusing (this blog will probably make matters worse)
- Source control is in mercurial … urgh, no one wants to work with that anymore since 2013
- No sane bug list AFAICT
- The mailing list archives are barely usable, difficult to explore or find useful information