On 3/15/12 4:46 PM, Jerry wrote:
On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:27:37 -0400
Terry Carmen articulated:
On 03/15/2012 03:06 PM, Steve Campbell wrote:
Firstly, this isn't meant to be critical, and I realize the subject
line probably suggest criticism, so...
I was sort of forced into using dovecot as my imap/pop server due
to upgrading 3 versions of OS on my mail servers. So far, that's
not bad. What surprises me is that one of the first things I
usually do whenever I start using different software is to purchase
a book that seems to suit me. Searching all of the common places
like amazon, ebay, etc for manuals turned up little to nothing on
dovecot.
I'm wondering why and is this so new that people just haven't
written books about it yet?
The one thing I'm a little critical of, though, is that trying to
make heads or tails of dovecot by following the online
documentation is a little problematic. I'm constantly jumping to
another page and then back to the original page, and for the most
part, I just don't know enough about it all yet to know what I'm
looking for.
The best docs are on the wiki and this mailing list. If you find the
information in the wiki to be lacking, the best thing you can do is
find the solution yourself and/or on this mailing list, and then make
a wiki entry so the next person will know how to solve the same
problem you had.
Dovecot is a complex piece of software, and understanding some
functionality requires reading the wiki, asking on the mailing list
and/or examining the source code. You can also obtain paid support
from these companies: http://dovecot.org/support.html
I'll be the first to admit that complex and specialized
configurations are sometimes difficult to figure out, however this
list has always been a tremendous amount of help.
The lack of truly informative documentation has been the Achilles' heel
of open-source software since its inception. I feel your pain. I have
always loved a hard copy, i.e. book documenting the subject I am
studying. Jumping from screen to screen sucks, plus how do I highlight
a passage on the monitor for future reference? There have been a few
books written to document Postfix, but to the best of my knowledge, none
exist for Dovecot.
I like books, but, especially in the case of actively developed software such as Dovecot, they
become outdated very quickly.
I have two editions of the Unix System Administration Handbook (can't remember the last time I
looked at them), and two editions of Backup & Recovery. I use Amanda for backup. It has been
developed actively over the last several years, and the Backup & Recovery chapter on Amanda is
sorely out of date. The wiki, the users mailing list, and the man pages are the only way to really
be up-to-date. With the book, you won't know anything about any changes or additions since the book
was written, which would have been at least many months before it was published.
I'm into online documentation every day. I'm a Solaris admin, but I've been jumping from Solaris 10
to Ubuntu without any books, and I've been jumping from ZFS to LVM without any books. That's a
significant transition. But it seems I can find almost everything online. Sometimes another admin
gives me an explanation and a link.
It's just the way things are. The digital world is moving too fast to be frozen
in print.
--
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Chris Hoogendyk
-
O__ ---- Systems Administrator
c/ /'_ --- Biology& Geology Departments
(*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
<hoogen...@bio.umass.edu>
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Erdös 4
