dovecot - Jul 2009 - getting Apple Mail and dovecot/IMAP to co-operate

Hi. I've been fighting a losing battle to get Apple Mail and dovecot  
to play nice. When dovecot is told to use mbox-style mailboxes, it's  
not possible to create child mailboxes. Apple Mail whines "The IMAP  
command ?CREATE? failed with server error: Mailbox doesn't allow  
inferior mailboxes.". I've looked through the documentation, the wiki  
and searched the mail archives without finding a solution. Can anyone  
help?

I've tried (and failed) to get a hybrid maildir/mbox setup to work  
like that shown on http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces. When that gets  
plugged into dovecot.conf, Apple Mail blocks, with the Activity window  
saying "waiting for login" or something like that, even though a valid
imaps connection and login has been established.

There's nothing getting logged by dovecote for both of these problems,  
even when syslog is turned all the way to debug priority.

Here's the current configuration info:

shaun# dovecot -n
# 1.1.16: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf
# OS: FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE amd64  ufs
base_dir: /var/run/dovecot/
syslog_facility: local4
protocols: imaps
listen: *, [::]
ssl_cert_file: /usr/local/etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem
ssl_key_file: /usr/local/etc/ssl/private/dovecot.pem
ssl_cipher_list: ALL:!LOW:!SSLv2
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable: /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_max_processes_count: 8
login_max_connections: 32
max_mail_processes: 32
mail_privileged_group: mail
mail_location: mbox:/mail/imap/%u:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
mail_debug: yes
mbox_write_locks: fcntl
auth default:
   mechanisms: cram-md5
   verbose: yes
   debug: yes
   passdb:
     driver: pam
   passdb:
     driver: passwd-file
     args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot-md5
   userdb:
     driver: passwd
shaun# dovecot --version
1.1.16

On Wed, 2009-07-08 at 17:58 +0100, Jim Reid wrote:
> Hi. I've been fighting a losing battle to get Apple Mail and dovecot  
> to play nice. When dovecot is told to use mbox-style mailboxes, it's  
> not possible to create child mailboxes. Apple Mail whines "The IMAP  
> command ?CREATE? failed with server error: Mailbox doesn't allow  
> inferior mailboxes.". I've looked through the documentation, the
wiki
> and searched the mail archives without finding a solution. Can anyone  
> help?
If you want to create e.g. "sub/box", start from nothing. Don't
create
"sub". Give the mailbox name as "sub/box". The
"sub" then can't have
messages, but it can have other child mailboxes.
> I've tried (and failed) to get a hybrid maildir/mbox setup to work  
> like that shown on http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces. When that gets  
> plugged into dovecot.conf, Apple Mail blocks, with the Activity window  
> saying "waiting for login" or something like that, even though a
valid
> imaps connection and login has been established.
I don't really know about that. What kind of a namespace configuration
exactly did you use?
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On 8 Jul 2009, at 18:08, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-07-08 at 17:58 +0100, Jim Reid wrote:
>> Hi. I've been fighting a losing battle to get Apple Mail and
dovecot
>> to play nice. When dovecot is told to use mbox-style mailboxes,
it's
>> not possible to create child mailboxes. Apple Mail whines "The
IMAP
>> command ?CREATE? failed with server error: Mailbox doesn't allow
>> inferior mailboxes.". I've looked through the documentation,
the wiki
>> and searched the mail archives without finding a solution. Can anyone
>> help?
>
> If you want to create e.g. "sub/box", start from nothing.
Don't create
> "sub". Give the mailbox name as "sub/box". The
"sub" then can't have
> messages, but it can have other child mailboxes.
Thanks for the quick response Timo. Sadly, your suggestion doesn't  
look as if it'll work because there are many non-empty parent  
mailboxes that have to get shifted to the new dovecot server. ie There  
are messages in sub as well as sub/box: too many to move to sub/ 
whatever. And there are many of these sorts of folders too. Some  
mailboxes are even more deeply nested with subfolders: sub/box1/box2  
where sub/box1 holds messages. Looks like an all-mbox solution isn't  
going to be viable at all. Oh well.
>> I've tried (and failed) to get a hybrid maildir/mbox setup to work
>> like that shown on http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces. When that gets
>> plugged into dovecot.conf, Apple Mail blocks, with the Activity  
>> window
>> saying "waiting for login" or something like that, even
though a
>> valid
>> imaps connection and login has been established.
>
> I don't really know about that. What kind of a namespace configuration
> exactly did you use?
Here's the last one I tried before hitting a dead end. There were  
various combinations of settings for the prefix, hidden and list  
variables that were tried unsuccessfully before that.

###namespace private {
###  separator = /
###  #prefix = "#mbox/"
###  location = mbox:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
###  inbox = yes
###  #hidden = yes
###  list = no   # for v1.1+
###}
###namespace private {
###  separator = /
###  prefix ###  location = maildir:/mail/imap/$u:LAYOUT=fs
###  inbox = no
###  list = yes
###}

Le 8 juil. 09 ? 18:58, Jim Reid a ?crit :
> Hi. I've been fighting a losing battle to get Apple Mail and dovecot  
> to play nice. When dovecot is told to use mbox-style mailboxes, it's  
> not possible to create child mailboxes. Apple Mail whines "The IMAP  
> command ?CREATE? failed with server error: Mailbox doesn't allow  
> inferior mailboxes.". I've looked through the documentation, the  
> wiki and searched the mail archives without finding a solution. Can  
> anyone help?
> [...]
Hello Jim,

Timo already replied with some hints related to your config and the  
LAYOUT setting.

I just wanted to add that Mail.app seems to correctly honor the IMAP  
conventions as far as naming is concerned, so that the creation of  
child mailboxes is perfectly possible from Mail.app's GUI.

Of course, if the server doesn't allow for dual-use mailboxes, neither  
will Mail.app... [1]

So, let's assume an fs layout for mboxes and "/" as hierarchy
separator.
If one selects the "New mailbox..." menu item and ask to create an  
item named "aaa/" somewhere on the server, this will create a  
directory named "aaa" on the server and appear as a greyed folder in  
the GUI.
The same way, one may ask to create "aaa/bbb/ccc" at the same  
location, or to create "bbb/ccc" under "aaa", or to create
"bbb/"
under "aaa" and then "ccc" under "bbb", and
everything works as
expected ("ccc" now being a file on the server and appearing as a blue
folder in the GUI).

Axel


[1] Note that Mail.app allows for dual-use mailboxes in the local  
storage, but this is thru a trick. If, at the same level, one has:
	- a directory named "aaa"
	- a directory named "aaa.mbox"
this will appear as a single blue folder named "aaa" in the GUI, and  
that folder may contain both messages (they are stored in "aaa.mbox")
and other mailboxes (they are stored in "aaa").