dovecot - Feb 2012 - Multiple instances

v2.1 now saves the base_dir and instance_name to /var/lib/dovecot/instances when
starting up. If you have for example two instances with names
"backend" and "proxy", you can then use:

doveadm -i proxy proxy list

instead of something like:

doveadm -c /etc/dovecot-proxy/dovecot.conf proxy list

The same -i parameter works for all dovecot programs. I also added a couple of
new doveadm commands:

# doveadm instance list
path                            name  last used           running
/var/run/dovecot                proxy 2012-02-06 21:41:39 yes    

# doveadm instance remove proxy

It would be possible to add commands to start/shutdown some/all instances using
doveadm, but is it all that useful? I'd guess people would have their own
init.d scripts anyway doing that.

Anything else that could be useful related to this?

Sorry to respond to an old post, but I've just recently begun implementing 
multiple instances to facilitate our director proxies running along with 
our normal dovecot config on the same servers in the cluster.

This is a VERY useful feature Timo, it may need just a little refinement.  

On Mon, 6 Feb 2012, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> # doveadm instance remove proxy
Hmm...maybe I'm doing something wrong or expecting the wrong behavior, but 
when I do this, while it dissapears from doveadm, it still responds to 
pop/imap requests, and the process continues to run.

Is remove supposed to be different than say, "stop"?
> It would be possible to add commands to start/shutdown some/all 
> instances using doveadm, but is it all that useful? I'd guess people 
> would have their own init.d scripts anyway doing that.
Eh, in a FreeBSD port-build environment, I have to hack something in place 
in the rc script that gets installed, and then make sure to duplicate it 
every time I upgrade dovecot...not ideal. 

So, if dovecot had some sort of mechanism in the main config file to alert 
it of the additional instances to start and their config files, that would 
be nice.

Or, if you were to add a "instance_enable" switch in the config files
and
then have dovecot scan the /usr/local/etc/dovecot directory for 
appropriate config files to automatically parse. 

I dunno, it doesn't feel right to push the startup of the additional 
instances outside of dovecot. For example, consider postfix's master.cf 
file. 

BTW somebody needs to poke the dovecot port maintaner, he still has 
2.0.18, I had to manually update the port to get 2.1.3.
> Anything else that could be useful related to this?
Yes...we should probably be able to start instances back up as well. 

Other then that, looks good. Definitely a great feature. 

Thanks,
Andy

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Andy Dills
Xecunet, Inc.
www.xecu.net
301-682-9972
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