AC:
Is there a way to configure Dovecot to authenticate a system user against a different password list?
sure!
I want to give my own personal account on my machine a password for IMAP and have that be different from the password I use to log into the system for maintenance purposes.
configure dovecot to use a separate passwd-file and simply use the same usernames.
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/AuthDatabase/PasswdFile username synchronisation may be the challenge... Andreas
