dovecot-lda as local mailer and access to manage sive

[Chris Kottaridis]

I am using Fedora 14.

I setup my mail server with dovecot so I am now able to access my host
for email from other hosts within my local net. It's been very helpful
to have that.

While I was able to add a dovecot mailer to the sendmail.cf file I was
never able to make it the local mailer. In the end I had to create
a .forward file and pipe the message through dovecot-lda. However, with
this limitation it only works for real user's with home directories that
would have a .forward file.

Are there any good pointers that could give me the necessary details to
run dovecot-lda as the local mailer from sendmail which should be able
to allow me to support virtual mail users that don't have a home
directory with a .forward file ?

A few weeks ago I played with this quite a bit, but never got the
sendmail.cf file quite right to use dovcot-lda as the local mailer.

Also, I have sieve enabled in dovecot. Right now I have evolution up and
running on one machine all the time that does the filtering of incoming
messages into their folders. The rest of the machines don't apply any
filters. I'd like to generate a sieve file so that dovecot-lda does the
filtering when the email initially comes in. But, I don't want to have
to login to one specific machine and edit the sieve instructions every
time I want to make a change.

So, I have manage sieve enabled, but as far as I can tell evolution
doesn't have a manage sieve client. I played with thunderbird a bit and
it seems it has a sieve extension that will access the manage sieve tool
to imap. But, I'd like to stick with evolution.

Is there an evolution plugin that will allow client access to manage
sieve from evolution ?

Thanks
Chris Kottaridis

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Chris Kottaridis <chriskot(a)quietwind.net&gt; said:
>  I was expecting
>  
>  /var/vmail/<domain>/Maildir
>  
>  where <domain> would be $j from sendmail, which I would have assumed was
>  my hostname. 
The issue may be on the Dovecot side; my example included both "-d $u"
and "-a $u+$h@$j" args to deliver, and I think Dovecot may be using the
-d arg instead of the -a arg for figuring the %u/%n/%d fields.  IIRC I
added the -a for Sieve processing (to get the +plus part of the
address).

Another way of handling it would be to setup a custom sendmail ruleset
for envelope recipient address rewriting.  The default EnvToL strips off
the domain; something like (mostly copied from EnvToL, untested of
course):

LOCAL_RULESETS
SEnvToL
R$+ < @ $+ >		$: $1 @ $2
R$+ < @ $* >		$: $1 @ $&m
R$+ + $*		$: < $&{addr_type} > $1 + $2
R<e s> $+ + $*		$: $1
R< $* > $+		$: $2

This would affect other mailers that use this ruleset of course (prog is
the only other by default).

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams(a)hiwaay.net&gt;
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

[Chris Kottaridis]

Yeah, 10 years ago I was probably modifying or instructing others how to
modify sendmail.cf rulesets on a weekly basis. But, I haven't done that
for a while so I am a bit rusty and apparently not determined enough
this time around to push it through. I can live with what I have for
now. I may come back to it if I get more determined.

Again thanks

Thanks
Chris Kottaridis

On Sat, 2011-07-23 at 02:37 -0500, Chris Adams wrote:
>  Once upon a time, Chris Kottaridis <chriskot(a)quietwind.net&gt;
> said:
>  > I want to be careful about dinking with rules. That was what I
>  > originally tried. What I wanted was some users to use dovecot-lda for
>  > delivery and others to use the standard mailer. For example I really
>  > want root to still go to /var/mail as well as other non-real users. So,
>  > I added the dovecot mailer and was dinking with rules sets to have root
>  > to use local mailer and other users resolve to dovecot mailer. I got
>  > quite entangled in the whole thing. I was close but couldn't quite get
>  > there. For now I am content with root ending up in /var/vmail.
>  
>  Yeah, that can get tricky, and requires a fair bit of sendmail knowledge
>  to do right.  I have a setup where the default local mailer is dovecot,
>  but users can choose to get procmail (all mail is delivered to users
>  with system accounts); the choice is stored in a custom field in an LDAP
>  directory.  Since I haven't really tested and pushed sieve use yet, the
>  only server-side filtering is via procmail.
>  
>  Of course, I've been writing sendmail rulesets for about 15 years now,
>  so it's second nature to me.  sendmail.cf really isn't just line noise!
>  :-)
>  
>  -- 
>  Chris Adams <cmadams(a)hiwaay.net&gt;
>  Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
>  I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Chris Kottaridis <chriskot(a)quietwind.net&gt; said:
>  I want to be careful about dinking with rules. That was what I
>  originally tried. What I wanted was some users to use dovecot-lda for
>  delivery and others to use the standard mailer. For example I really
>  want root to still go to /var/mail as well as other non-real users. So,
>  I added the dovecot mailer and was dinking with rules sets to have root
>  to use local mailer and other users resolve to dovecot mailer. I got
>  quite entangled in the whole thing. I was close but couldn't quite get
>  there. For now I am content with root ending up in /var/vmail. 
Yeah, that can get tricky, and requires a fair bit of sendmail knowledge
to do right.  I have a setup where the default local mailer is dovecot,
but users can choose to get procmail (all mail is delivered to users
with system accounts); the choice is stored in a custom field in an LDAP
directory.  Since I haven't really tested and pushed sieve use yet, the
only server-side filtering is via procmail.

Of course, I've been writing sendmail rulesets for about 15 years now,
so it's second nature to me.  sendmail.cf really isn't just line noise!
:-)

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams(a)hiwaay.net&gt;
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

[Chris Kottaridis]

On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 11:41 -0500, Chris Adams wrote:
>  Once upon a time, Chris Kottaridis <chriskot(a)quietwind.net&gt;
> said:
>  > I was expecting
>  > 
>  > /var/vmail/<domain>/Maildir
>  > 
>  > where <domain> would be $j from sendmail, which I would have assumed was
>  > my hostname.
>  
>  The issue may be on the Dovecot side; my example included both "-d $u"
>  and "-a $u+$h@$j" args to deliver, and I think Dovecot may be using the
>  -d arg instead of the -a arg for figuring the %u/%n/%d fields.  IIRC I
>  added the -a for Sieve processing (to get the +plus part of the
>  address). 
Yeah, I thought that as well, and I think I tried that with no
difference, but I'll try it again to make sure.
>  
>  Another way of handling it would be to setup a custom sendmail ruleset
>  for envelope recipient address rewriting.  The default EnvToL strips off
>  the domain; something like (mostly copied from EnvToL, untested of
>  course):
>  
>  LOCAL_RULESETS
>  SEnvToL
>  R$+ < @ $+ >		$: $1 @ $2
>  R$+ < @ $* >		$: $1 @ $&m
>  R$+ + $*		$: < $&{addr_type} > $1 + $2
>  R<e s> $+ + $*		$: $1
>  R< $* > $+		$: $2
>  
>  This would affect other mailers that use this ruleset of course (prog is
>  the only other by default). 
Yeah, I was wondering if there was another sendmail macro that
represents the domain of the To address that  made it conclude it
belonged to this machine. But maybe there isn't.

I want to be careful about dinking with rules. That was what I
originally tried. What I wanted was some users to use dovecot-lda for
delivery and others to use the standard mailer. For example I really
want root to still go to /var/mail as well as other non-real users. So,
I added the dovecot mailer and was dinking with rules sets to have root
to use local mailer and other users resolve to dovecot mailer. I got
quite entangled in the whole thing. I was close but couldn't quite get
there. For now I am content with root ending up in /var/vmail.

Thanks for the help and the suggestions.

Thanks
Chris Kottaridis
>  
>  -- 
>  Chris Adams <cmadams(a)hiwaay.net&gt;
>  Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
>  I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Chris Kottaridis <chriskot(a)quietwind.net&gt; said:
>  While I was able to add a dovecot mailer to the sendmail.cf file I
> was
>  never able to make it the local mailer. 
Dovecot's deliver acts similar to procmail, so I use it with the
following in my .mc:

FEATURE(`local_procmail',`/usr/libexec/dovecot/deliver',`deliver -e -d $u -a
$u+$h@$j')
define(`LOCAL_MAILER_FLAGS',LOCAL_MAILER_FLAGS`Ep')
MAILER(local)

Although I have sieve and managesieve enabled, I haven't actually done
anything with it.  If you install Horde+IMP+Ingo, you can configure Ingo
to use sieve (again, I haven't tried it myself).  I think there's also a
Thunderbird add-on for managesieve.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams(a)hiwaay.net&gt;
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 16:43 -0600, Chris Kottaridis wrote:
>  I am using Fedora 14.
>  
>  I setup my mail server with dovecot so I am now able to access my host
>  for email from other hosts within my local net. It's been very helpful
>  to have that.
>  
>  While I was able to add a dovecot mailer to the sendmail.cf file I was
>  never able to make it the local mailer. In the end I had to create
>  a .forward file and pipe the message through dovecot-lda. However, with
>  this limitation it only works for real user's with home directories that
>  would have a .forward file.
>  
>  Are there any good pointers that could give me the necessary details to
>  run dovecot-lda as the local mailer from sendmail which should be able
>  to allow me to support virtual mail users that don't have a home
>  directory with a .forward file ?
>  
>  A few weeks ago I played with this quite a bit, but never got the
>  sendmail.cf file quite right to use dovcot-lda as the local mailer.
>  
>  Also, I have sieve enabled in dovecot. Right now I have evolution up and
>  running on one machine all the time that does the filtering of incoming
>  messages into their folders. The rest of the machines don't apply any
>  filters. I'd like to generate a sieve file so that dovecot-lda does the
>  filtering when the email initially comes in. But, I don't want to have
>  to login to one specific machine and edit the sieve instructions every
>  time I want to make a change.
>  
>  So, I have manage sieve enabled, but as far as I can tell evolution
>  doesn't have a manage sieve client. I played with thunderbird a bit and
>  it seems it has a sieve extension that will access the manage sieve tool
>  to imap. But, I'd like to stick with evolution.
>  
>  Is there an evolution plugin that will allow client access to manage
>  sieve from evolution ? 
Not as far as I know. It's been requested more than once but there
doesn't seem to be enough interest to get someone to work on it, which
is a pity. Perhaps if more IMAP servers supported it that would change,
but it's a chicken and egg situation.

poc

[Chris Kottaridis]

On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 20:39 -0500, Chris Adams wrote:
>  Dovecot's deliver acts similar to procmail, so I use it with the
>  following in my .mc:
>  
>  FEATURE(`local_procmail',`/usr/libexec/dovecot/deliver',`deliver -e -d $u -a
> $u+$h@$j')
>  define(`LOCAL_MAILER_FLAGS',LOCAL_MAILER_FLAGS`Ep')
>  MAILER(local) 
OK that worked. Thanks. I was approaching this completely wrong. I
reread the sendmail README and see the reference to this. Not sure how I
missed it before.

Now that dovecot-lda is delivering mail I changed the mail home
directory by modifying the auth-system.conf.ext file's userdb:

# System users (NSS, /etc/passwd, or similiar). In many systems nowadays
this
# uses Name Service Switch, which is configured in /etc/nsswitch.conf.
userdb {
  # <doc/wiki/AuthDatabase.Passwd.txt>
  driver = passwd
  # [blocking=no]
  args = uid=vmail gid=vmail home=/var/vmail/%d/%n
  #args =
}

I added the args line. I created /var/vmail owned by vmail:vmail and
sent an email and it populated /var/vmail.

Yay!

However, it created a

/var/vmail/chrisk/Maildir

I was expecting

/var/vmail/<domain>/Maildir

where <domain> would be $j from sendmail, which I would have assumed was
my hostname.

From the sendmail README $j should be:

> Normally, the $j macro is automatically defined to be your fully
> qualified domain name (FQDN).  Sendmail does this by getting your
> host name using gethostname and then calling gethostbyname on the
> result. 
So, I am a little confused why the directory created
is /var/vmail/chrisk/Maildir rather
then /var/vmail/<hostname>/chrisk/Maildir. Since dovecot-lda gets
-a $u+$h@$j. I would have expected %d to be $j and %n to be $u:

From 10-mail.conf
# There are a few special variables you can use, eg.:
#
#   %u - username
#   %n - user part in user@domain, same as %u if there's no domain
#   %d - domain part in user@domain, empty if there's no domain
#   %h - home directory

Does that mena that sendmail is not passing $j ?

Truth be told what I'd like the %d to be the domain name portion that
the email was sent to. So, if this host is a mailhost for multiple
domains I could have users in different domains with the same username.

But I am not sure what sendmail variable that would be rather then $j.
But, since $j seems to be ignored or not getting initialized, it makes
me wonder if I can do what I'd like to do.

Anyway, thanks this has gotten me past my initial hurdle and I am
functional for what I currently need to do.

Thanks
Chris Kottaridis
>  
>  Although I have sieve and managesieve enabled, I haven't actually done
>  anything with it.  If you install Horde+IMP+Ingo, you can configure Ingo
>  to use sieve (again, I haven't tried it myself).  I think there's also a
>  Thunderbird add-on for managesieve.
>  
>  -- 
>  Chris Adams <cmadams(a)hiwaay.net&gt;
>  Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
>  I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.