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I am in the process of setting up my very first email server. I can get everything up and running (thanks to apt-get). Manage to tie the users with system users.

Now I am setting up virtual users for dovecot. But however, I also notice I can setup users in sendmail itself.

Why is it so that you can setup users in 2 different places. Other mail server will send to the user in sendmail or dovecot?

henry
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Normally setting up users in sendmail is redundant - all you're really setting up is email aliases. So out of the box, if your username is 'henry' you'll be receiving mail for henry@example.com, if you also want to receive mail addressed to henry-sysadmin@example.com, then you'd add an entry to the virtuser table. Also if you need to handle virtual domains, then you'd add entries here.

Note that in the normal course of events, when the SMTP server receives a message addressed to your domain, if there are no re-writing rules difned in the virtuser/generics tables, then it just passes it on to the delivery agent to work out how to get it to the addressee.

So for a single domain, just adding the users in dovecot is all that's required.

The omplication to this is where you require authentication for SMTP - but in most cases (i.e. unless you're an ISP) its simpler to only allow relaying from your internal LAN/VPN.

symcbean
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  • any simple to read guide for dovecot? – henry Nov 29 '10 at 07:02
  • Dovecot is not involved with reception, delivery, and storage of mail. I just quoted from dovecot guide. So how sendmail can pass to dovecot as said by you? – henry Dec 03 '10 at 09:16
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    Eh? Go read it again. You don't understand the differences between an MTA, MDA and MUA – symcbean Dec 03 '10 at 09:19