dovecot - Dec 2004 - Purging /var/mail/username ?

Dovecot is delivering mail to my ~/.mail directory wonderfully. But 
/var/mail/michael is growing steadily.

Is it the job of Dovecot to purge this file regularly? Is there a setting 
somewhere for this?

Thanks,
Michael

Michael Hipp schrieb:
> Dovecot is delivering mail to my ~/.mail directory wonderfully. But 
> /var/mail/michael is growing steadily.
Something must be delivering there. I'm sure dovecot is not delivering 
any mail, so it can't be delivering to ~/.mail :)
Maybe you need to configure your MTA (exim,postfix,sendmail,....) to 
deliver to ~/.mail?
> Is it the job of Dovecot to purge this file regularly? Is there a 
> setting somewhere for this?
No. You can, however, make dovecot read /var/mail/michael as INBOX and 
put the other folders in ~/.mail, but personally I recommend against 
this and suggest changing the delivery agent (MTA, see above; or maybe 
maildrop, procmail, ...) to deliver to ~/.mail instead.

johannes

Michael Hipp wrote:
> Dovecot is delivering mail to my ~/.mail directory wonderfully. 
Dovecot doesn't deliver mail; it serves it up.  Your LDA (Local Delivery 
Agent), part of the MTA (Mail Transport Agent), is responsible for delivery.
> But /var/mail/michael is growing steadily.
What MTA are you using (e.g. Postfix, exim, qmail, sendmail)?

John

-- 
John Peacock
Director of Information Research and Technology
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite H
Lanham, MD  20706
301-459-3366 x.5010
fax 301-429-5748

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[sent again - to the list this time]

On 23-12-2004 15:36, Michael Hipp wrote:
> Dovecot is delivering mail to my ~/.mail directory wonderfully. But
> /var/mail/michael is growing steadily.
>
> Is it the job of Dovecot to purge this file regularly? Is there a
> setting somewhere for this?
Sounds like you are used to the special mbox feature of UW-imap: If the
file $HOME/mbox exists, then that is masqueraded as INBOX and when
reading it using POP3 or IMAP the content of /var/mail/$user is first
transfered to $HOME/mbox.

Dovecot does not support the UW-IMAP mbox feature. Mail below /var/mail
is purged when/if the users purge their INBOX.

I like that feature: It makes it possible to do hardquota and if hitting
the roof it is at first only user and the local admin knows, instead of
emails bouncing right away.


 - Jonas

- --
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 - Enden er n?r: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm
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On 23-12-2004 18:48, Michael Hipp wrote:
> From reading http://www.dovecot.org/doc/mail-storages.txt it appears
> maildir stores everything in ~/Maildir. That's another good reason to
> switch to it - so everything is in one place.
There's good reasons to use Maildir, and there's good reasons to stay
with mbox, but avoiding /var/mail is not one of them.

mbox is the "classical" format, and Timo (I assume) chose to setup
dovecot to use the "classical" location scheme as well, which is to
store incoming mail below /var/mail and let users pull it from there and
store it however they want at their personal folder below /home.

If you are new to all this, actually there is probably a good point in
staying close to the "classical" way of doing things, so that you can
get help from more sources.

I suggest keep receiving mail below /var/mail as mbox files, and play
around with mbox and Maildir storage for different (test-)users below /home.



Good luck, whatever you choose.


 - Jonas


- --
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 - Enden er n?r: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm
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