sendmail with dovecot with nologin account

[David Robillard]

> I am using dovecot imap and I am having a problem directing mail to
> go to users in Maildir format when they do not have a login shell.
>
> It seems that the .procmailrc file is ignored and the mail is put
> in mbox format into /var/mail
>
> For mail-only users with-out a shell, what is the best way to direct
> mail to them in Maildir format within ~/Maildir - maybe directly from
> .forward?

Hello David,

We run dovecot + sendmail + procmail and also store mails in Maildirs.
All of our 3500+ users don't have any access to the mailserver and it
works like a charm.

The trick is to keep things as simple as possible. No home directory
for users nor any valid shell plus a global procmailrc file which is
used for all of the users.

For example, start by instructing sendmail to use procmail in the
/etc/mail/`hostname`.mc

FEATURE(`local_procmail')dnl

Then make sure dovecot knows where the mail is stored:

default_mail_env = maildir:/var/mail/%u

Our example mail user has this entry in master.passwd(5) :

example.user:<encrypted password string>:13431:231::0:0:Example
User:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin

And the Global procmail configuration is very simple:

cat /usr/local/etc/procmailrc

# procmailrc
#
# $Id: procmailrc,v 1.1 2006/10/20 13:08:25 drobilla Exp $
#
# System wide procmail(1) configuration file.
# This configuration causes procmail(1) to deliver mail
# to maildir format as the recipient's UID.

DROPPRIVS = yes
:0
/var/mail/$LOGNAME/

# EOF

<bad reference>A single file to rule them all</bad reference>

Sorry, couldn't resist :)

Let me know if you need any help with this setup.

Cheers,

David
-- 
David Robillard
UNIX systems administrator & Oracle DBA
CISSP, RHCE & Sun Certified Security Administrator
Montreal: +1 514 966 0122