dovecot - Mar 2012 - seeking advice: dovecot versions; mailbox formats.

Hi,

I'm currently migrating our old (colocated) mail server (running a 
[terribly outdated, I know] dovecot 1.1.11) to a new VPS (virtual 
private server). The old server was running gentoo linux (which is 
mainly the culprit of the old dovecot version: gentoo was too much 
trouble to keep updating); the new server will run debian (stable: 6).

Debian currently has dovecot 1.2.15 in its repositories; not that much 
newer...
I read in the docs about the auto-generated-from-hg debian dovecot 
packages for 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. Which leaves me to the choice what 
version to use... OK, 2.2 is development, which leaves the choice to: 
1.2.15; 2.0.x, or 2.1.x.

I would appreciate any consideration or thoughts on what version to choose.


On a related note, there is the possibility to switch from maildir to 
dbox. I did not really find much pros or cons, except from performance 
and standards-compliance (ability to use e.g. mutt on the server 
itself). Any thoughts?


About the server: we're just a small company. Think about 15 accounts, 
normal mail traffic, sometimes relatively large attachments (20mb+). 
Some accounts have many folders; some accounts are very large (5Gb+). 
Storage is on ext3, raid10. Performance has never been an issue; 
reliability and ease of maintenance is more important.

Thanks,
Vincent Schut.

On 2012-03-08 4:56 AM, Vincent Schut <schut at sarvision.nl>
wrote:
> The old server was running gentoo linux (which is mainly the culprit of
> the old dovecot version: gentoo was too much trouble to keep updating);
Please stop with the FUD...

I've been running gentoo for 8+ years, and it is a *breeze* to keep 
updated, *especially* long term (since it is a 'rolling release' type of
distro)...

Yes, it actually does require some minimum amount of attention from the 
admin, like, say, once per week or once per month updates - buy so 
should *any* system... and yes, it does require a little more 
willingness to learn and 'get your hands dirty' (especially for the 
installation), but it is well worth it.

Oh - and Portage rocks... :)

-- 

Best regards,

Charles

On 08.03.2012 10:56, Vincent Schut wrote:
> Debian currently has dovecot 1.2.15 in its repositories; not that much 
> newer...
> I read in the docs about the auto-generated-from-hg debian dovecot 
> packages for 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. Which leaves me to the choice what 
> version to use... OK, 2.2 is development, which leaves the choice to: 
> 1.2.15; 2.0.x, or 2.1.x.
>
> I would appreciate any consideration or thoughts on what version to 
> choose.
On several production machines we are using dovecot from debian testing 
repos, so 2.0.x. It's working stable for us and is quite easy to maintain.
Please be careful and very selectively install packages from testing. If 
possible, the package dependences should be installed from stable/security.

-- 
Adam Szpakowski

Vincent Schut <schut at sarvision.nl> writes:
> Debian currently has dovecot 1.2.15 in its repositories; not that much
> newer...
No, Debian has 1.2.15 in its /stable (squeeze)/ repositories, there are
newer versions available in other Debian repositories.

micah