Dovecot versus Postfix

[Tommy Trussell]

On Nov 14, 2007 8:36 AM, Jan Sneep <jan at azureservices.ca> wrote:
> > > How do you point directly to it with an email client? For
> > the POP3 server I
> > > would just give it the IP address of 192.168.1.104 ?
> >
> > what happens when you do that? Give it the ubuntu username and
> > password and IP address and see!
>
> I setup an account in Outlook and for the Pop3 and SMTP I gave it the
> 192.168.1.104 address and for user name tried "jan" as this is the name of
> the mailbox I see in Postfix using Webmin and my PSWD and then told Outlook
> to "Send & Receive" and it came back with an error that it couldn't find a
> server to talk to. Does Postfix and / or Dovecot use ports other than the
> standard 25 & 110?
>
> How come Webmin doesn't have an Icon for looking at the Dovecot mailbox,
> does it use the same mailbox that Postfix uses?

Postfix and/or dovecot can use whatever ports you tell them to. By
default they will be at the ports you expect, though as I mentioned I
prefer IMAP so I can't tell you for certain about POP3.

I haven't used webmin in years... you're at the mercy of the
limitations of whomever wrote the module -- it may not show such
things because the author didn't write such a thing, or didn't think
to. Most people wouldn't need to see a "dovecot mailbox" because it's
not the sort of thing you would ever change.

OK I just did what I should have all along... I just installed dovecot
so I could have a look. (Just about everything I have told you before
has been from memory, which is ALWAYS a mistake.)

Do you have the pop3 daemon installed? (It's a separate package called
dovecot-pop3d) I recommend also installing dovecot-imapd but only
because I prefer IMAP over POP3. It won't hurt you to have both. If
the pop3 daemon is already installed I recommend you go back to
whatever LAMP documentation you tried before and see if you can see
where you went wrong before.

---> Personally I find the dovecot.conf file to be VERY well
commented. I think if you look at it carefully you will see your
issue. <----

ALSO you never mentioned what you saw when you configured postfix
using the command I mentioned. Did it take care of your issue with
postfix?

Remember that ALL the daemons, even in a LAMP server, will be
installed with extremely conservative (even inactivated) settings by
default so that someone won't get themselves into too much trouble if
they install the package and don't configure it.  ***Note specifically
that the protocols line in dovecot will be empty, so by default it
WON'T do anything.***

I think that's about all I can do to help. If you're still lost, I
suggest starting again from scratch, and remember that GNU/linux is a
bunch of pieces of software that have evolved organically, not a
single consolidated thing like some commercial software products.