Double ugh!
Oh, yeah, I forgot; Redhat based Linuxes (most of them) use PAM instead of the traditional /etc/password stuff. So vm-pop3d won’t work, nor will postoffice (a /whole/ shitload of other stuff doesn’t work either, like the posting interface to this weblog. So even if I write up a PAM authentication shim layer to configure into vm-pop3d (edit: okay, it turns out vm-pop3d already has a pam layer in it, but it authenticates against the service “vm-pop3d” which make install doesn’t even try to install. Weird. So I modified it to use the “passwd” auth and now it works. It saves me from dovecot, which has the annoying misfeatures of (a) adding new headers to all of the mail in /var/mail/orc and (b) spitting them all up to my mac as Brand! New! messages. Yay open source software, I guess) and postoffice I’d still be left with a nonfunctional system. Ugh, I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.) Argh, just kill me now – I should just find a hosting provider that lets me install homemade system images, then find a way to image the existing gehenna and move it over.