8.0-RELEASE completed...

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 07:47:28PM +0000, Bruce Cran wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:30:18 -0800
> Gary Kline <kline at thought.org> wrote:
> 
> > 	{ One far, far OT question here: who can explain what dovecot
> > 	is/does? why it even exists?  I'm familiar with MTA's, like
> > 	sendmail; likewise with MUA's, like evo, kmail, and mutt.
> > 	It's time to learn another level of complexity, evidently....}
> 
> Dovecot is an IMAP/POP3 server - sendmail lets you send mail, dovecot
> lets you fetch it from a remote server.

There is one thing Dovecot offers (purely as a nicety; it has no
relation to the IMAP/POP3 functionality of the daemon per se) which is
unlike other IMAP/POP3 daemon -- its own SASL implementation.  This
allows for MTAs like Postfix and Exim to use the SASL feature of Dovecot
to do user/pass authentication:

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Sasl

I consider this a major plus, given that I avoid Cyrus software like the
plague.

If you maintain a server which runs both a public-facing MTA which
permits users to send mail through it (via SMTP AUTH) and an IMAP/POP3
daemon, then this feature of Dovecot is a blessing.  Getting it to work
with Postfix is incredibly simple -- 4 lines in main.cf, and a single
line in master.cf; no need to rebuild all your software to link to a
library, blah blah...

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |