Hi T. Jay Fowler,
> How does the new dovecot-integrated world work? And do I have
> partial install or bad config if dovecot was a drop-in replacement
> for the former config?
Well, it is as follows: Qpopper is a pretty ancient service and running it off
xinetd isn't the most effective way. Especially not on a very active server
where you may have plenty of POP3 logins per minute. Qpopper does have its
limitations and it's pretty hard to cope with that from a technological point
of view.
Dovecot is a much more modern variant. Dovecot handles both POP3 and IMAP
supports all the new and shiny protocols that most modern email clients
provide - including support for SSL. That's right: With the new Dovecot your
clients can finally check their email over SSL. Still it is fully backwards
compatible, so existing clients don't have to reconfigure their email
clients. But they *can* do so if they wish to use the new features.
The updated Sendmail likewise supports SSL, but also SMTP-AUTH, which is a
much better alternative than the previously used POP-before-SMTP. With
SMTP-AUTH enabled your server will only accept email for relaying, if the
sender authenticates against SMTP with his username and password. Likewise
the GUI pages for "Server Management" / "Network Services" / "Email" have
been updated to allow you to selectively enable and disable the new services.
If you want to continue to use POP-before-SMTP, then you can usually do so as
well. In fact you can have both SMTP-AUTH and POP-before-SMTP enabled,
although - after a transitional time - you should leave only SMTP-AUTH
enabled as it is the much more secure one.
--
With best regards,
Michael Stauber
http://www.solarspeed.net