Hi there, Whilst trying to come up with a minimal configuration for Dovecot: http://dabase.com/blog/Minimal_Dovecot/ I noticed the configuration syntax is a bit admin unfriendly. It's easy to get an infamous Error code 89. Is there any back story to the grammar or language this configuration is in? Kind regards,
Kai Hendry <hendry at dabase.com> wrote:> Whilst trying to come up with a minimal configuration for Dovecot: > http://dabase.com/blog/Minimal_Dovecot/I think your characterization of the complexity of dovecot configuration by simply counting configuration lines to get it working is off base. It's conceivable to have all the default values work for you and only specify those that differ from defaults (or configure your system to conform to defaults if you want to place the proverbial cart before the horse), but that doesn't make it less complex -- it just hides it. (See doveconf -a if you want to see what you're shorthanding). If you want minimal configuration fuss, you can try uw-imapd. Not a lot of knobs to twist on that thing, but you'll have to accept all its limitations as well. A well chosen set of defaults that works for most people is a good design decision, but I've seen plenty of different and oddball layouts (including the sneakernet post preceding this one) that requires a lot of flexibility, which necessarily requires a lot of configuration to express them. The sample configuration is verbose because it doubles as documentation: you can use it as a starting point and remove the parts you don't need, or start from the documentation and move forward. I agree, though, that the documentation needs an editorial overhaul -- it's a little bewildering to find what you need along with the contextual information.> I noticed the configuration syntax is a bit admin unfriendly. It's easy > to get an infamous Error code 89. > > Is there any back story to the grammar or language this configuration is > in?It appears to me to have grown organically, and maybe will need pruning some day. Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com>
On 28.11.2013, at 12.22, Kai Hendry <hendry at dabase.com> wrote:> Hi there, > > Whilst trying to come up with a minimal configuration for Dovecot: > http://dabase.com/blog/Minimal_Dovecot/ > > I noticed the configuration syntax is a bit admin unfriendly. It's easy > to get an infamous Error code 89.If Dovecot can?t parse the configuration file, it writes the error message to stderr. I?d say it?s a systemd problem if it hides the error. Perhaps Dovecot could also log the error to the mail syslog, but that won?t really help people who have configured the logging differently. (And since Dovecot can?t parse the config, it can?t read where it should log the error.)> Is there any back story to the grammar or language this configuration is > in?I guess it would be ok to allow section { key = value } in one line. I just haven?t felt the need to spend time on that. Feel free to send a patch.> I wouldn't mind editing the wiki if I had permission to so and ideally > via a git backend. http://ikiwiki.info/ or without the Web interface > http://laktek.github.io/punch/ is good. Or even my low tech wiki > https://github.com/kaihendry/wordsisterChanging the wiki software now would be a huge task. Besides converting the wiki text itself, you?d also need to write man page -> wiki conversion and wiki -> .txt conversions and I think there are some other things as well. Wiki can still be changed by anyone, as it says you can get the captcha answer by email. (I started having to revert wiki spam daily and changing the captcha only helped for a few days.)> I hope it's fixed. Is there a bug tracker btw? > > I just see this proposal here: > http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2007-January/018786.htmlI?m planning on having a public bug tracker where issues can be tracked, but only added by some admins (to avoid the 3th problem in the link above). But this requires my workload to drop. Which it almost certainly will during the next year.