dovecot - Jul 2004 - namespaces and behaviour of LIST and SELECT with leading ~

Hi

One weirdness when going through the code:

(We are migrating from WU-IMAP and have users with a mixture of ~/IMAP/
and ~/Mail/ for storing mail - but all user INBOX=~/.email thankfully.
IMAP client config is even more random and we have 1800 users.

I have been playing with namespaces to translate various prefixes ala:

default_mail_env mbox:%h/:INBOX=%h/.email:INDEX=/var/cache/dovecot/%n
# Note lack of IMAP ^^^ (So clients can use ~/IMAP or ~/Mail - we have a
# historic mixture)
full_filesystem_access = no
namespace private {
  separator = /
  inbox = yes
  prefix   hidden = no
  location = mbox:.email
}
namespace private {
  separator = /
  prefix   hidden = no
  location = mbox:IMAP/
}
namespace private {
  separator = /
  prefix = IMAP/
  hidden = no
  location = mbox:IMAP/
}
namespace private {
  separator = /
  prefix = ~/IMAP/
  hidden = no
  location = mbox:IMAP/
}

User tstest has INBOX in ~/.email and mail folders in
~/IMAP/ all in mbox format:

Here's a sample conversation:

* OK dovecot ready.
1 login tstest *******
1 OK Logged in.
1 list "" % 
* LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" INBOX
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "Trash"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "Queue"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "Sent"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "Drafts"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "Blah"
1 OK List completed.

	Good

1 list "" IMAP/%
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "IMAP/Trash"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "IMAP/Queue"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "IMAP/Sent"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "IMAP/Drafts"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "IMAP/Blah"
1 OK List completed.

	Good

1 list "" ~/IMAP/%
1 OK List completed.

	Oops (being caught by mbox_is_valid_mask as prefix begins with ~ and
the client supplied prefix is being tested, not the virtual one after
namespace prefix substitution)

	But...

1 select Blah
* FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)]
Flags permitted.* 5 EXISTS
* 0 RECENT
* OK [UNSEEN 1] First unseen.
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1090326264] UIDs valid
* OK [UIDNEXT 6] Predicted next UID
1 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed.

	Yes

1 select IMAP/Blah
* FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)]
Flags permitted.* 5 EXISTS
* 0 RECENT
* OK [UNSEEN 1] First unseen.
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1090326264] UIDs valid
* OK [UIDNEXT 6] Predicted next UID
1 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed.

	Yes

1 select ~/IMAP/Blah
* FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)]
Flags permitted.* 5 EXISTS
* 0 RECENT
* OK [UNSEEN 1] First unseen.
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1090326264] UIDs valid
* OK [UIDNEXT 6] Predicted next UID
1 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed.

	Oo - this works despite the ~

I would argue that with namespace {} directives, the behaviour of SELECT
is correct. I would suggest that it may be better to test the final
translated path thus:

if full_filesystem_access = yes
	let anything go.
else
	make sure that final translated mail path is identical OR a subpath
of the default_mail_env mbox folder path. (INBOX is a special case and
can be matched as well)

This is a suggestion - what do you think? I'd have a go myself but I
don't yet feel competant with the dovecot code.

Best wishes

Tim
-- 
Tim J Southerwood
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On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 18:19, Tim Southerwood wrote:
> namespace private {
>   separator = /
>   inbox = yes
>   prefix >   hidden = no
>   location = mbox:.email
> }
> namespace private {
>   separator = /
>   prefix >   hidden = no
>   location = mbox:IMAP/
> }
Well, this seems to work because the later namespace declaration
overrides the first one with same prefix, but that wasn't really how I
thought the inbox was to be used. Rather set the full location for all
namespaces, eg.:

location = mbox:IMAP/:INBOX=.email:INDEX=/var/cache/...

and mark one of them with inbox = yes. Or in case there's no inbox=yes,
it uses the one with empty prefix.
> if full_filesystem_access = yes
> 	let anything go.
> else
> 	make sure that final translated mail path is identical OR a subpath
> of the default_mail_env mbox folder path. (INBOX is a special case and
> can be matched as well)
> 
> This is a suggestion - what do you think? I'd have a go myself but I
> don't yet feel competant with the dovecot code.
Now that I looked at the code, I think it needs some larger fixing.
Namespace prefix should be removed in imap-specific code and lib-storage
code shouldn't need to know anything about namespaces. Except
subscription code is handled by lib-storage and it needs to know the
namespace prefixes. Hmm. Have to think a while how the API should
actually work. I guess the subscription handling needs to be more or
less separated.

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