dovecot - Feb 2007 - mail_location and storage type

Hi,

I was setting up a new system for testing Dovecot 1.0. My old one is
using 0.99 and was set up quite a time ago, so I had to consult the
documentation.

I needed several attempts until it worked and that was because the
designated maildir directory /server/mail/jrg/Maildir was completely
empty. Upon login the server exited and wrote the following to the log:
POP3(jrg): Ambiguous mail location setting, don't know what to do with
it: /server/mail/jrg/Maildir (try prefixing it with mbox: or maildir:)
POP3(jrg): Failed to create storage with data: /server/mail/jrg/Maildir

That thing was the main cause of my confusion since the config wasn't
ambiguous at all at already contained a prefix:
mail_location = maildir:/server/mail/%u/Maildir

The wiki article MailLocation doesn't contain any hint maildirs have to
contain at least a cur subdirectory. That information I eventually got
from mail-storages.txt - that file must be one for which the wiki isn't
an alternative.

So what is this mail about?
1. The log message is wrong or at least missleading. Would be fine if it
could get improved.
2. Is there any reason at all to have a storage prefix but still require
some special format for the directory in order to recognize it?
3. At least if the behaviour will stay, shouldn't the text from
mail-storages.txt converted to a wiki article or incorporated into
MailLocation?

Regards,
Juergen

On Wed, 2007-02-07 at 18:11 +0100, J?rgen Herz wrote:
> POP3(jrg): Ambiguous mail location setting, don't know what to do with
> it: /server/mail/jrg/Maildir (try prefixing it with mbox: or maildir:)
> POP3(jrg): Failed to create storage with data: /server/mail/jrg/Maildir
..
> mail_location = maildir:/server/mail/%u/Maildir
Maybe it got it elsewhere? From userdb maybe? Or do you also have
default_mail_env? Or if you change that setting, does the path in the
error message change?

You could also verity with mail_debug=yes what the imap process sees as
the mail location. I'm pretty sure it doesn't see the
"maildir:" prefix.
> The wiki article MailLocation doesn't contain any hint maildirs have to
> contain at least a cur subdirectory. That information I eventually got
> from mail-storages.txt - that file must be one for which the wiki isn't
> an alternative.
That's not a requirement. Dovecot creates the new, cur and tmp
directories itself if they're not found.

Creating the cur directory probably fixed it because then it allowed the
mailbox format autodetection code to work.
> 3. At least if the behaviour will stay, shouldn't the text from
> mail-storages.txt converted to a wiki article or incorporated into
> MailLocation?
I should delete doc/*.txt :) I'll go do that now..
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