Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Sami Ketola]

> On 20 Nov 2017, at 12.54, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> 
> If I had lets say 10 nodes handling incoming SMTP and delivery to local
> maildirs in parallel and independantly on a network storage and imapping this
> from another independant 4 nodes, then building a not needed bottleneck by
> shifting over the local delivery via director and LMTP to fewer nodes is just
> braindead creation of high loads on few boxes.
> 
> And btw it scales perfectly because all that is needed if load increases is
> up'ing additional nodes for SMTP/delivery or IMAP _which are all the same (of
> two types)_.
> 
> The loadbalancer needed for this can be equally used for e.g. web, ftp and
> other services. So there is absolutely no extra stuff needed for the mail
> setup.

Thanks for the info. But I was more after some real performance figures such as
LMTP deliveries per second, IMAP logins per second or number of concurrent
IMAP connections or mails FETCH/sec.

Sami

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 12:05:46 +0200
Sami Ketola  wrote:

> > On 20 Nov 2017, at 10.50, Stephan von Krawczynski 
> > wrote:
> > 
> > AFAIK no complex director stuff would be needed then, right?
> > The second sentence implies that using file locking should also be enough,
> > which dovecot does.  
> 
> You are building such a complex system and then you think that creating
> director layer would be complex?
> 
> Just out of curiosity may I ask what size of an environment is this? As it's
> very hard for me to believe that this would scale.
> 
> Sami

If I had lets say 10 nodes handling incoming SMTP and delivery to local
maildirs in parallel and independantly on a network storage and imapping this
from another independant 4 nodes, then building a not needed bottleneck by
shifting over the local delivery via director and LMTP to fewer nodes is just
braindead creation of high loads on few boxes.

And btw it scales perfectly because all that is needed if load increases is
up'ing additional nodes for SMTP/delivery or IMAP _which are all the same (of
two types)_.

The loadbalancer needed for this can be equally used for e.g. web, ftp and
other services. So there is absolutely no extra stuff needed for the mail
setup.

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Sami Ketola]

> On 20 Nov 2017, at 10.50, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> 
> AFAIK no complex director stuff would be needed then, right?
> The second sentence implies that using file locking should also be enough,
> which dovecot does.

You are building such a complex system and then you think that creating 
director layer 
would be complex?

Just out of curiosity may I ask what size of an environment is this? As it's 
very hard for
me to believe that this would scale.

Sami

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2017 21:40:55 +0200
Timo Sirainen  wrote:

> On 7 Nov 2017, at 21.33, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Me again have to stress that our former implementation of the lda process
> > did do exactly nothing to all the dovecot files, and everything worked
> > pretty well. We had no problems in years. So I really wonder if it
> > wouldn't be the best way to simply cut away all the heavy dovecot magic
> > from the lda as an option. All it really needs to do is pipe the mail into
> > a temp file, do the sieve stuff and learn from it where to rename this
> > temp file to, basically. On the other hand you have lots of config
> > parameters in dovecot dealing with different approaches to lock files
> > (from fcntl to dotlock). I would expect at least one of them to work over
> > NFS.  
> 
> I suppose you could create a unique new per-delivery temporary directory
> where dovecot-lda writes the mail, so it knows nothing about the user's real
> home/mail directory. Then move it from there to Maildir/tmp/ -> rename to
> Maildir/new/. I suppose you'd need to copy the Sieve script to the temp
> directory. Not sure if something would have to be done
> with .dovecot.lda-dupes.
> 
> > And we do see stuff like:
> > 
> > 2017-11-07T00:46:59.102961+01:00 mail-a05 dovecot:
> > lda(someb...@somedomain.com): Warning: Locking transaction log
> > file /dovecot.index.log took 40 seconds (appending)
> > 
> > So some locking seems to work.  
> 
> The problem isn't locking, but caching of data. Especially because Dovecot
> doesn't lock when reading files.

The problem with data caching would not be existant if dovecot used O_DIRECT
like proposed in the nfs (linux) docs.

 From nfs(5) manpage 

The NFS protocol is not designed to support true cluster file system cache
coherence without some type of application serialization. If absolute cache
coherence among clients is required, applications should use file locking.
Alternatively, applications can also open their files with the O_DIRECT flag
to disable data caching entirely. 

- end 

AFAIK no complex director stuff would be needed then, right?
The second sentence implies that using file locking should also be enough,
which dovecot does.


-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Timo Sirainen]

On 7 Nov 2017, at 21.33, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> 
> 
> Me again have to stress that our former implementation of the lda process did
> do exactly nothing to all the dovecot files, and everything worked pretty
> well. We had no problems in years. So I really wonder if it wouldn't be the
> best way to simply cut away all the heavy dovecot magic from the lda as an
> option. All it really needs to do is pipe the mail into a temp file, do the
> sieve stuff and learn from it where to rename this temp file to, basically.
> On the other hand you have lots of config parameters in dovecot dealing with
> different approaches to lock files (from fcntl to dotlock). I would expect at
> least one of them to work over NFS.

I suppose you could create a unique new per-delivery temporary directory where 
dovecot-lda writes the mail, so it knows nothing about the user's real 
home/mail directory. Then move it from there to Maildir/tmp/ -> rename to 
Maildir/new/. I suppose you'd need to copy the Sieve script to the temp 
directory. Not sure if something would have to be done with .dovecot.lda-dupes.

> And we do see stuff like:
> 
> 2017-11-07T00:46:59.102961+01:00 mail-a05 dovecot: 
> lda(someb...@somedomain.com):
> Warning: Locking transaction log
> file /dovecot.index.log took 40 seconds (appending)
> 
> So some locking seems to work.

The problem isn't locking, but caching of data. Especially because Dovecot 
doesn't lock when reading files.

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2017 19:19:23 +0200
Timo Sirainen  wrote:

> On 7 Nov 2017, at 9.15, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, 07 Nov 2017 13:19:12 +1000
> > Noel Butler  wrote:
> >   
> >> mail_location   Optionally disable indexes using   :INDEX=MEMORY  
> >> 
> >> don't use this on IMAP boxes, but is safe to use on SMTP and POP3's
> >> boxes though 
> >> 
> >> eg: 
> >> 
> >> mail_location =
> >> maildir:/var/vmail/%Ld/%1Ln/%1.1Ln/%2.1Ln/%Ln/Maildir:INDEX=MEMORY 
> >>   
> > Hello Noel,
> > 
> > this sounds interesting. Can you please elaborate why you think this is no
> > good idea for IMAP?
> > We used a different LDA-scheme before (simply created the mail in
> > maildir/tmp, then renamed it to maildir/new, just like Bernstein suggests
> > to do) and it worked very well, no matter if the box was used whith IMAP
> > or POP3. Why should there be any difference in using dovecot-lda without
> > indexes? Does dovecot-lda "create" the new mail by atomic rename from tmp,
> > too?  
> 
> Although the above disables updating indexes, there's still dovecot-uidlist
> file that is always updated by dovecot-lda. It might also cause corruption
> problems when multiple servers are accessing it at the same time. There's
> some old code that attempts to avoid updating the uidlist when it's not
> necessary (MAILBOX_TRANSACTION_FLAG_ASSIGN_UIDS==0), but I don't know if
> that works. There's also .dovecot.lda-dupes file that is written. And the
> Sieve scripts' compiled versions that you wanted to start using. In short:
> This might work, but I have a feeling you'll run into random corruption
> problems. I gave up trying to support simultaneous access in multiple
> servers via NFS long time ago, because no matter what I did kernel always
> cached too much and caused corruption (or alternatively it didn't cache
> enough and caused performance problems).

Hello Timo,

Me again have to stress that our former implementation of the lda process did
do exactly nothing to all the dovecot files, and everything worked pretty
well. We had no problems in years. So I really wonder if it wouldn't be the
best way to simply cut away all the heavy dovecot magic from the lda as an
option. All it really needs to do is pipe the mail into a temp file, do the
sieve stuff and learn from it where to rename this temp file to, basically.
On the other hand you have lots of config parameters in dovecot dealing with
different approaches to lock files (from fcntl to dotlock). I would expect at
least one of them to work over NFS.
And we do see stuff like:

2017-11-07T00:46:59.102961+01:00 mail-a05 dovecot: lda(someb...@somedomain.com):
Warning: Locking transaction log
file /dovecot.index.log took 40 seconds (appending)

So some locking seems to work.
-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Timo Sirainen]

On 7 Nov 2017, at 9.15, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 07 Nov 2017 13:19:12 +1000
> Noel Butler  wrote:
> 
>> mail_location   Optionally disable indexes using   :INDEX=MEMORY  
>> 
>> don't use this on IMAP boxes, but is safe to use on SMTP and POP3's
>> boxes though 
>> 
>> eg: 
>> 
>> mail_location =
>> maildir:/var/vmail/%Ld/%1Ln/%1.1Ln/%2.1Ln/%Ln/Maildir:INDEX=MEMORY 
>> 
> Hello Noel,
> 
> this sounds interesting. Can you please elaborate why you think this is no
> good idea for IMAP?
> We used a different LDA-scheme before (simply created the mail in maildir/tmp,
> then renamed it to maildir/new, just like Bernstein suggests to do) and it
> worked very well, no matter if the box was used whith IMAP or POP3.
> Why should there be any difference in using dovecot-lda without indexes?
> Does dovecot-lda "create" the new mail by atomic rename from tmp, too?

Although the above disables updating indexes, there's still dovecot-uidlist 
file that is always updated by dovecot-lda. It might also cause corruption 
problems when multiple servers are accessing it at the same time. There's some 
old code that attempts to avoid updating the uidlist when it's not necessary 
(MAILBOX_TRANSACTION_FLAG_ASSIGN_UIDS==0), but I don't know if that works. 
There's also .dovecot.lda-dupes file that is written. And the Sieve scripts' 
compiled versions that you wanted to start using. In short: This might work, 
but I have a feeling you'll run into random corruption problems. I gave up 
trying to support simultaneous access in multiple servers via NFS long time 
ago, because no matter what I did kernel always cached too much and caused 
corruption (or alternatively it didn't cache enough and caused performance 
problems).

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Tanstaafl]

On 11/6/2017, 6:18:43 PM, Stephan von Krawczynski 
wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Nov 2017 09:50:16 -0500 Tanstaafl  wrote:
>> Dovecot's indexing is one of its main features, and WHY it is so much
>> faster than others.
>>
>> And you want to just turn it off? Good luck...

> It seems you have not understood what I am talking about. Our pre-dovecot lda
> did not touch the index either. And it did not harm the imap/pop procedure in
> any way. So we know there is no need to fiddle with the index in the process
> of delivery into the maildirs to keep our performance as it was before.

Apparently I'm still missing something...

Sure, you may be keeping your performance at pre-dovecot levels - but
why on earth would that even be a goal?

One of the main reasons I switched from Courier to Dovecot a very long
time ago was for the expected performance boost from the use of the
indexes, which were automatically updated at delivery time (if you used
the LDA), and the boost was huge, I was extremely pleased with the results.

There is no 'fiddling', it just works.

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Tue, 07 Nov 2017 13:19:12 +1000
Noel Butler  wrote:
 
> mail_location   Optionally disable indexes using   :INDEX=MEMORY  
> 
> don't use this on IMAP boxes, but is safe to use on SMTP and POP3's
> boxes though 
> 
> eg: 
> 
> mail_location =
> maildir:/var/vmail/%Ld/%1Ln/%1.1Ln/%2.1Ln/%Ln/Maildir:INDEX=MEMORY 
> 
> -- 
> Kind Regards, 
> 
> Noel Butler 

Hello Noel,

this sounds interesting. Can you please elaborate why you think this is no
good idea for IMAP?
We used a different LDA-scheme before (simply created the mail in maildir/tmp,
then renamed it to maildir/new, just like Bernstein suggests to do) and it
worked very well, no matter if the box was used whith IMAP or POP3.
Why should there be any difference in using dovecot-lda without indexes?
Does dovecot-lda "create" the new mail by atomic rename from tmp, too?

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Angel L. Mateo]

El 03/11/17 a las 12:50, Stephan von Krawczynski escribió:

Hello,

we have a setup where SMTP/LDA and POP3/IMAP are on different physical hosts.
They share the mail data via an external storage.
Now we would like to use dovecot-lda on the smtp host, so we wonder if the
lda binary works without starting dovecot from init. As there will be no
POP3/IMAP usage on this host it seems unnecessary. Nevertheless we cannot
judge if it is still needed for lda to work.
Your opinion?


	You could configure dovecot in the smtp box without pop3 and imap 
daemons without any problem (I guess). All you have to do is disable 
these services in master configuration.


	But I wouldn't do it that way. I think is easier to configure LDA in 
the pop3/imap server and configure SMTP to deliver mail via LMTP to the 
dovecot server. This way you have to deal with dovecot configuration 
just in the mailbox server and you don't have to share storage.


--
Angel L. Mateo Martínez
Sección de Telemática
Área de Tecnologías de la Información
y las Comunicaciones Aplicadas (ATICA)
http://www.um.es/atica
Tfo: 868889150
Fax: 86337

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Noel Butler]

On 07/11/2017 09:18, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:

> On Mon, 6 Nov 2017 09:50:16 -0500
> Tanstaafl  wrote:
> 
> On 11/6/2017, 4:01:19 AM, Stephan von Krawczynski 
> wrote: Still we are not content with it touching/locking dovecot.index.log. If
> someone pointed at one location in the code where this could be disabled we
> would implement a new param for switching that off.   
> ?
> 
> Dovecot's indexing is one of its main features, and WHY it is so much
> faster than others.
> 
> And you want to just turn it off? Good luck...

It seems you have not understood what I am talking about. Our
pre-dovecot lda
did not touch the index either. And it did not harm the imap/pop
procedure in
any way. So we know there is no need to fiddle with the index in the
process
of delivery into the maildirs to keep our performance as it was before. 

mail_location   Optionally disable indexes using   :INDEX=MEMORY  

don't use this on IMAP boxes, but is safe to use on SMTP and POP3's
boxes though 

eg: 

mail_location =
maildir:/var/vmail/%Ld/%1Ln/%1.1Ln/%2.1Ln/%Ln/Maildir:INDEX=MEMORY 

-- 
Kind Regards, 

Noel Butler 

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Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Mon, 6 Nov 2017 09:50:16 -0500
Tanstaafl  wrote:

> On 11/6/2017, 4:01:19 AM, Stephan von Krawczynski 
> wrote:
> > Still we are not content with it touching/locking dovecot.index.log. If
> > someone pointed at one location in the code where this could be disabled we
> > would implement a new param for switching that off.  
> 
> ?
> 
> Dovecot's indexing is one of its main features, and WHY it is so much
> faster than others.
> 
> And you want to just turn it off? Good luck...

It seems you have not understood what I am talking about. Our pre-dovecot lda
did not touch the index either. And it did not harm the imap/pop procedure in
any way. So we know there is no need to fiddle with the index in the process
of delivery into the maildirs to keep our performance as it was before.

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Tanstaafl]

On 11/6/2017, 4:01:19 AM, Stephan von Krawczynski 
wrote:
> Still we are not content with it touching/locking dovecot.index.log. If
> someone pointed at one location in the code where this could be disabled we
> would implement a new param for switching that off.

?

Dovecot's indexing is one of its main features, and WHY it is so much
faster than others.

And you want to just turn it off? Good luck...

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Mon, 6 Nov 2017 08:37:11 +0200
Sami Ketola  wrote:

> > On 5 Nov 2017, at 12.55, Stephan von Krawczynski 
> > wrote: Sorry to say this setup works flawlessly for years. The only
> > addition we will make now is to do the delivery with dovecot-lda.
> > Everything else (including multiple dovecot pop/imap servers) will stay as
> > is. Hopefully dovecot-lda does not fiddle around with the indexes too
> > much, as we then would have to delete this part of the code out. It is not
> > needed as we found out during the last 10 years of delivering mails into
> > the maildirs by atomic rename action while dovecot is presenting them over
> > imap.  
> 
> 
> Feel free to do anything you like. I'm just going to mention to people later
> reading these from the achives not to take this kind of strange hack as an
> example of recommended dovecot clustering. Instead consider it as an
> opposite of any best practices cluster setup.
> 
> Sami

Maybe they are interested that it runs like charm ;-)
Of course it is overly complex to let dovecot-lda look up the mail_location
since we already know that when starting it, but at least it shows a nice
output in the logs.
Still we are not content with it touching/locking dovecot.index.log. If
someone pointed at one location in the code where this could be disabled we
would implement a new param for switching that off.

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Sami Ketola]

> On 5 Nov 2017, at 12.55, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> Sorry to say this setup works flawlessly for years. The only addition we
> will make now is to do the delivery with dovecot-lda. Everything else
> (including multiple dovecot pop/imap servers) will stay as is.
> Hopefully dovecot-lda does not fiddle around with the indexes too much, as we
> then would have to delete this part of the code out. It is not needed as we
> found out during the last 10 years of delivering mails into the maildirs by
> atomic rename action while dovecot is presenting them over imap.


Feel free to do anything you like. I'm just going to mention to people later 
reading these
from the achives not to take this kind of strange hack as an example of 
recommended
dovecot clustering. Instead consider it as an opposite of any best practices 
cluster setup.

Sami

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Sun, 5 Nov 2017 10:44:25 +0200
Sami Ketola  wrote:

> > On 4 Nov 2017, at 10.31, Stephan von Krawczynski 
> > wrote:
> > 
> > On Sat, 4 Nov 2017 01:57:31 +0200
> > Sami Ketola  wrote:  
> >> Again that does not answer my question why? Why do you want all the
> >> locking problems and multi-access problems that come with setup like
> >> that? What is the actual problem that you are trying to solve?
> >> 
> >> Sami  
> > 
> > Really, I can hardly believe you don't now large loadbalancing ISP setups
> > with multiple nodes per single service ...?
> > The simple problem: massive numbers of emails  
> 
> Nope. Has never been done. Has never been recommended way. You will get more
> problems with that setup that you are seeking to solve.
> 
> Use multiple dovecot backends with director ring in front and switch to lmtp
> delivery via the director ring if you have scalability problems. Then you
> can just increase number of backends in case they are overloaded.
> 
> Sami

Sorry to say this setup works flawlessly for years. The only addition we
will make now is to do the delivery with dovecot-lda. Everything else
(including multiple dovecot pop/imap servers) will stay as is.
Hopefully dovecot-lda does not fiddle around with the indexes too much, as we
then would have to delete this part of the code out. It is not needed as we
found out during the last 10 years of delivering mails into the maildirs by
atomic rename action while dovecot is presenting them over imap.

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Sami Ketola]

> On 4 Nov 2017, at 10.31, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 4 Nov 2017 01:57:31 +0200
> Sami Ketola  wrote:
>> Again that does not answer my question why? Why do you want all the locking
>> problems and multi-access problems that come with setup like that? What is
>> the actual problem that you are trying to solve?
>> 
>> Sami
> 
> Really, I can hardly believe you don't now large loadbalancing ISP setups with
> multiple nodes per single service ...?
> The simple problem: massive numbers of emails

Nope. Has never been done. Has never been recommended way. You will get more 
problems
with that setup that you are seeking to solve.

Use multiple dovecot backends with director ring in front and switch to lmtp 
delivery via the director
ring if you have scalability problems. Then you can just increase number of 
backends in case
they are overloaded.

Sami

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Sat, 4 Nov 2017 01:57:31 +0200
Sami Ketola  wrote:

> >> 
> >> While it might be possible to disable all the other services except
> >> master I must ask why? How would the users be accessing their mails then?
> >> 
> >> Sami  
> > 
> > Hello Sami,
> > 
> > you did not read my first post. We are talking about a multihost
> > installation where one host does SMTP and LDA, and the other does POP and
> > IMAP (with dovecot). Now we want to use dovecot-lda for the local delivery
> > _on the SMTP host_. So there is no need for open POP or IMAP ports and the
> > corresponding running services.   
> 
> Again that does not answer my question why? Why do you want all the locking
> problems and multi-access problems that come with setup like that? What is
> the actual problem that you are trying to solve?
> 
> Sami

Really, I can hardly believe you don't now large loadbalancing ISP setups with
multiple nodes per single service ...?
The simple problem: massive numbers of emails

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan Herker]

On 11/3/2017 4:57 PM, Sami Ketola wrote:

While it might be possible to disable all the other services except master I
must ask why? How would the users be accessing their mails then?

Sami

Hello Sami,

you did not read my first post. We are talking about a multihost installation
where one host does SMTP and LDA, and the other does POP and IMAP (with
dovecot). Now we want to use dovecot-lda for the local delivery _on the SMTP
host_. So there is no need for open POP or IMAP ports and the corresponding
running services.

Again that does not answer my question why? Why do you want all the locking 
problems
and multi-access problems that come with setup like that? What is the actual 
problem that
you are trying to solve?

Sami

I think you have to run dovecot on the server receiving mails, just 
don't open imap/pop3 ports so users can't get there.  Then publish the 
other server as your imap/pop3 server.  Both servers probably should 
have the same setup for postfix and dovecot, but just kill the ports on 
the one that doesn't need it.  To run lda you're going to have to run 
dovecot on your mail relay.

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Sami Ketola]

>> 
>> While it might be possible to disable all the other services except master I
>> must ask why? How would the users be accessing their mails then?
>> 
>> Sami
> 
> Hello Sami,
> 
> you did not read my first post. We are talking about a multihost installation
> where one host does SMTP and LDA, and the other does POP and IMAP (with
> dovecot). Now we want to use dovecot-lda for the local delivery _on the SMTP
> host_. So there is no need for open POP or IMAP ports and the corresponding
> running services. 

Again that does not answer my question why? Why do you want all the locking 
problems
and multi-access problems that come with setup like that? What is the actual 
problem that
you are trying to solve?

Sami

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Aki Tuomi]

you could try setting
protocols =
in config file to disable (most) listeners.
---Aki TuomiDovecot oy
 Original message From: Stephan von Krawczynski 
<skraw...@ithnet.com> Date: 03/11/2017  19:39  (GMT+02:00) To: Dovecot Mailing 
List <dovecot@dovecot.org> Subject: Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot? 
On Fri, 3 Nov 2017 19:30:22 +0200
Sami Ketola <sami.ket...@dovecot.fi> wrote:

> > On 3 Nov 2017, at 18.23, Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw...@ithnet.com>
> > wrote: Hello Aki,
> > 
> > let me explain this a bit more. We do not intend to use only some copied
> > binary. Of course we would do a full installation of dovecot and
> > pidgeonhole, only we question if it is necessary to start the dovecot
> > init-file bringing up the dovecot imap/imap-login/pop/pop-login/auth and
> > other processes. Indeed we have virtual users.  
> 
> 
> While it might be possible to disable all the other services except master I
> must ask why? How would the users be accessing their mails then?
> 
> Sami

Hello Sami,

you did not read my first post. We are talking about a multihost installation
where one host does SMTP and LDA, and the other does POP and IMAP (with
dovecot). Now we want to use dovecot-lda for the local delivery _on the SMTP
host_. So there is no need for open POP or IMAP ports and the corresponding
running services. 

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Fri, 3 Nov 2017 19:30:22 +0200
Sami Ketola  wrote:

> > On 3 Nov 2017, at 18.23, Stephan von Krawczynski 
> > wrote: Hello Aki,
> > 
> > let me explain this a bit more. We do not intend to use only some copied
> > binary. Of course we would do a full installation of dovecot and
> > pidgeonhole, only we question if it is necessary to start the dovecot
> > init-file bringing up the dovecot imap/imap-login/pop/pop-login/auth and
> > other processes. Indeed we have virtual users.  
> 
> 
> While it might be possible to disable all the other services except master I
> must ask why? How would the users be accessing their mails then?
> 
> Sami

Hello Sami,

you did not read my first post. We are talking about a multihost installation
where one host does SMTP and LDA, and the other does POP and IMAP (with
dovecot). Now we want to use dovecot-lda for the local delivery _on the SMTP
host_. So there is no need for open POP or IMAP ports and the corresponding
running services. 

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Sami Ketola]

> On 3 Nov 2017, at 18.23, Stephan von Krawczynski  wrote:
> Hello Aki,
> 
> let me explain this a bit more. We do not intend to use only some copied
> binary. Of course we would do a full installation of dovecot and pidgeonhole,
> only we question if it is necessary to start the dovecot init-file bringing up
> the dovecot imap/imap-login/pop/pop-login/auth and other processes.
> Indeed we have virtual users.


While it might be possible to disable all the other services except master I 
must ask why?
How would the users be accessing their mails then?

Sami

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Fri, 3 Nov 2017 17:53:47 +0200 (EET)
Aki Tuomi  wrote:

> > On November 3, 2017 at 1:50 PM Stephan von Krawczynski
> >  wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > we have a setup where SMTP/LDA and POP3/IMAP are on different physical
> > hosts. They share the mail data via an external storage.
> > Now we would like to use dovecot-lda on the smtp host, so we wonder if the
> > lda binary works without starting dovecot from init. As there will be no
> > POP3/IMAP usage on this host it seems unnecessary. Nevertheless we cannot
> > judge if it is still needed for lda to work.
> > Your opinion?
> > 
> > -- 
> > Regards,
> > Stephan  
> 
> dovecot-lda does not work without dovecot unless you have physical users and
> you run the binary as target user. with virtual users it's virtually
> impossible to achieve.
> 
> Aki

Hello Aki,

let me explain this a bit more. We do not intend to use only some copied
binary. Of course we would do a full installation of dovecot and pidgeonhole,
only we question if it is necessary to start the dovecot init-file bringing up
the dovecot imap/imap-login/pop/pop-login/auth and other processes.
Indeed we have virtual users.

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: dovecot-lda without starting dovecot?

[Aki Tuomi]

> On November 3, 2017 at 1:50 PM Stephan von Krawczynski  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> we have a setup where SMTP/LDA and POP3/IMAP are on different physical hosts.
> They share the mail data via an external storage.
> Now we would like to use dovecot-lda on the smtp host, so we wonder if the
> lda binary works without starting dovecot from init. As there will be no
> POP3/IMAP usage on this host it seems unnecessary. Nevertheless we cannot
> judge if it is still needed for lda to work.
> Your opinion?
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Stephan

dovecot-lda does not work without dovecot unless you have physical users and 
you run the binary as target user. with virtual users it's virtually impossible 
to achieve.

Aki