Need advice for setting up mail server

[Doug Hardie]

> On 7 August 2016, at 09:49, Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve at sohara.org> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 7 Aug 2016 09:25:06 -0700
> Doug Hardie <doug at sermon-archive.info> wrote:
> 
>> I found it best to use dovecot's MDA from postfix so that pigeon sieve
>> could be used during delivery.  That gives you features like vacation and
>> automatic delivery to inboxes other than INBOX.  I did the initial setup
>> one step at a time.  Get it working then add the next feature.
> 
> 	Hmm that's interesting I used procmail for that which involves
> fiddling with procmailrc which is fine for me but less so for others. Is it
> easy for users to set up the automatic delivery ?

I found the sieve language a bit confusing at first.  It took a few tries to get one to compile without errors.  One of the more interesting aspects is that the sieve is not compiled when you save it.  It is compiled when the next message is processed.  It will generate a log file if an error is found.  The error messages are actually helpful.  There is a way to manually force the compile, but I never can remember it.  I just send myself an email so I don't have to wait to find out if the change was proper.  Using the web interface might make it easier.  I have never bothered to install it to find out.  Currently I am the only one using that feature and vi is just fine for me.  If one of the others starts using it though I'll probably have to try that.

I believe that freebsd 11 has two different sieve implementations available for the dovecot MDA.  I started this server on freebsd 9.3 and it had only pigeonhole (I got the name wrong earlier).  I am in the midst of upgrading the machine to 11 so haven't investigated the other implementation.  I'll probably stick with pigeonhole as its working.