dovecot - Nov 2009 - LDA: handling non-existent mail dirs

We have users existing in LDAP but not supposed to receive mail.
We used to handle that (somewhat ungracefully) by simply not creating the top
mail directory for those accounts.
Since switching to Dovecots LDA, these non-existing dirs are considered
temporary failures and so the junk mails pile up in postfix' queue

Would it be possible for deliver to optionally treat this as a permanent error?

I know the clean solution woud be checking for an LDAP attribute in postfix
before even accepting the mail.

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On Thu, 26 Nov 2009, Edgar Fu? wrote:
> We have users existing in LDAP but not supposed to receive mail.
> We used to handle that (somewhat ungracefully) by simply not creating the
top mail directory for those accounts.
> Since switching to Dovecots LDA, these non-existing dirs are considered
temporary failures and so the junk mails pile up in postfix' queue
Well, you can check the source, IMHO a non-existant directory is a local 
configuration error, hence, I would not like it.
> I know the clean solution woud be checking for an LDAP attribute in postfix
before even accepting the mail.
If your postfix accepts the mail for an existant user, who cannot 
permanently receive messages, it will generate a DSN, I guess, too. If so, 
your server will get problems (get banned) because of backscatter by some 
restricted sites.

Do you have such a complicated LDAP setup, that you do not find a simple 
filter for postfix to "not find" those accounts without mailbox? E.g.
an
attribute that only does with or without mailbox include?

Regards,

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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On Thu, 2009-11-26 at 20:25 +0100, Edgar Fu? wrote:
> We have users existing in LDAP but not supposed to receive mail.
> We used to handle that (somewhat ungracefully) by simply not creating the
top mail directory for those accounts.
> Since switching to Dovecots LDA, these non-existing dirs are considered
temporary failures and so the junk mails pile up in postfix' queue
> 
> Would it be possible for deliver to optionally treat this as a permanent
error?
You can patch the code, but I think adding an extra option just for that
won't benefit much more other people than you..

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