[Dovecot] dovecot tring to load sql modules

[Dean Gibson (Mail Administrator)]

On 2006-08-13 11:11, Axel Thimm wrote:
> Installing support for mysql client libs does not imply you have to 
> run a mysql server (or even access one). That's what security is about 
> when discussing minimal systems in a security context.

Really?  And how do you install JUST the client libs?  On my Fedora Core 
1 CD-ROMS, there are:

/Fedora/RPMS/mysql-3.23.58-4.i386.rpm
/Fedora/RPMS/mysql-bench-3.23.58-4.i386.rpm
/Fedora/RPMS/mysql-devel-3.23.58-4.i386.rpm
/Fedora/RPMS/mysql-server-3.23.58-4.i386.rpm

The only way to get libmysqlclient.so.10 is to install the base 
mysql-3.23.58-4.i386.rpm.  However, that requires:

        perl(DBI) is needed by mysql-3.23.58-4
        perl-DBD-MySQL is needed by mysql-3.23.58-4
        perl-DBI is needed by mysql-3.23.58-4

And who knows WHAT from there.  I already have PERL installed, but not 
the above packages.

Oh, and by the way, the dovecot RPM I downloaded also "needs" SQLite;  
that isn't even on my FC1 CD-ROMS.  Who knows what kind of treasure hunt 
THAT requires.

> Do you need hyperbole and elliptic functions? Or maybe not even sqrt?  
> Should then glibc allow riping them out? Of course not.

That's silly.  Those are standard C-library routines, not major packages.

> And what should any packaging system do when you suddenly do reference mysql support in dovecot.conf? Should it automatically install the missing libs the moment you leave the editor?
>   

The packaging system shouldn't do anything.  If I were ever to suddenly 
reference mysql support in dovecot.conf, I expect to THEN get the error 
message I got, and then it is then MY responsibility to go install all 
the MySQL crap I need.  Of course, I'd use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL, 
but that's another story.

Fortunately, when I gave up chasing the MySQL RPM dependency trail and 
downloaded the dovecot source, for some inexplicable reason it built 
without having to engage in the usual "include file treasure hunt".  It 
took a couple builds (getting pam-dev and OpenSSL-dev, and for some 
reason e2fsprogs-dev), and a couple configuration fits and starts, but 
now Dovecot is up and running.

So why did I move from UW-IMAP to Dovecot?  Because UW-IMAP requires all 
the clients to specify the mail subdirectory.  That works fine for most 
mail clients, but it doesn't work with the default mail client on Pocket 
PCs.  While that is a deficiency in the Pocket PC mail client, it is 
also a deficiency in UW-IMAP, where the author refuses to make it a 
configuration option, claiming that he intended the daemon to be 
"plug-and-play".  This laughable attitude is so typical of many Unix 
developers, that it's somehow more important for the SERVER to be 
"plug-and-play" than it is for the CLIENT to be "plug-and-play".  No 
wonder Linux is not replacing Windows among most users.  No wonder that 
RedHat dropped UW-IMAP from its distributions.

-- Dean