Hey, I'm trying to sort out how to make dovecot replace uw-imap cleanly. But I have the following problems/questions: 1. Why is mbox support limited to user-owned directories? 2. Would it be possible to have dovecot target a different place than ~user/mail by default, specfically some place like /var/path/to/maildirs/userdir/ I'd like to move all my mail storage out of user homedirs and to central space on my mail server, increasing reliability and helping me manage disk space usage for readily. In order to use dovecot I need a migration path and that path looks like it will need mbox outside of the users homedirs and pottentially outside of solely user-owned directories. -sv -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20021219/a45c8dd0/attachment-0003.bin>
* On 2002.12.19, in <1040311765.17838.12.camel at opus>, * "seth vidal" <skvidal at phy.duke.edu> wrote:> > 2. Would it be possible to have dovecot target a different place than > ~user/mail by default, specfically some place like > /var/path/to/maildirs/userdir/ > ... > In order to use dovecot I need a migration path and that path looks like > it will need mbox outside of the users homedirs and pottentially outside > of solely user-owned directories.We had a similar need with uw-imap -- we had 25,000 users in /var/mail, and wanted to split them out across multiple subdirectories. The route we chose for this is actually pretty flexible, and configurable from outside of the imap server process. It should be usable in dovecot, too, if anyone wants to investigate. It's just a link library, and using it inside any arbitrary application can be as simple as 1 or 2 lines of C. There's a readme at http://home.uchicago.edu/~dgc/sw/mailpath/README and the package itself is at http://home.uchicago.edu/~dgc/sw/mailpath/mailpath-1.0.tar.gz http://home.uchicago.edu/~dgc/sw/mailpath/mailpath-1.0.tar.gz.sig This isn't a product in any formal sense, and it's not supported by anyone in particular; it's just what I wrote for internal use at our site. But if it seems useful, I'd be glad to answer questions once you read the README. :) -- -D. dgc at uchicago.edu NSIT University of Chicago We're the colon in :// -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 193 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20021219/e1c2cbdd/attachment-0003.bin>
On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 07:28:36PM -0600, David Champion wrote:> We had a similar need with uw-imap -- we had 25,000 users in /var/mail, > and wanted to split them out across multiple subdirectories. The route > we chose for this is actually pretty flexible, and configurable from > outside of the imap server process. It should be usable in dovecot, too, > if anyone wants to investigate. It's just a link library, and using it > inside any arbitrary application can be as simple as 1 or 2 lines of C.'"Overkill" is my middle name.' Yeah. :) CVS Dovecot has already default_mail_path which supports $U as username. Using your idea of supporting $1U $2U etc. to limit it to first 1 or 2 chars could be good enough idea to implement by default. Other than that, I don't see much use for the rest of the variables. Hmm. Except maybe separating "user at domain" username so that you could use path like /var/mail/domain/user/.
On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 10:29:24AM -0500, seth vidal wrote:> I'm trying to sort out how to make dovecot replace uw-imap cleanly. But > I have the following problems/questions: > > 1. Why is mbox support limited to user-owned directories?Dovecot currently only supports keeping all IMAP folders in under one drectory. You'd want keep INBOX elsewhere than rest of the IMAP folders? Symlinks would allow that currently. Maybe I should allow inbox elsewhere too .. only problem is that I'm not sure how that should be configured. Maybe the MAIL environment would have multiple parts with mbox, like: mbox:/home/$U/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/$U:Trash=/tmp/$U First being the default IMAP folder path, rest being named mailboxes or folders elsewhere.> 2. Would it be possible to have dovecot target a different place than > ~user/mail by default, specfically some place like > /var/path/to/maildirs/userdir/default_mail_env = /var/path/to/maildirs/$U/ Works in CVS.> In order to use dovecot I need a migration path and that path looks like > it will need mbox outside of the users homedirs and pottentially outside > of solely user-owned directories.Hm. Or did I understand it right above, what do you mean with "outside user-owned directories"? Single mailboxes in non-owned dir or folders just outsde home dir? Latter shouldn't matter where they are, as long as Dovecot has write access to them.