dovecot - Dec 2005 - Struggling with namespaces...

Hi all,

I've been using dovecot 0.99x as a basic POP3/IMAP server at a couple of
sites for a few months now and am very happy with it's simplicity,
stability and performance, especially over the rather 'clunky' courier
and the mammoth cyrus.

I'm building up a top level mail server for our organisation and am
desperate to use dovecot in there but I'm really struggling with using
namespaces to create some shared maildirs - note that in this case I'm
using the 1.0alpha4 debian packages that recently made it into 'etch'. 
I have very simple requirements here - I just want to be able to have
some common folders subscribable by certain users, for my testing an
announcements folder accessible by all and an archive folder I want to
place some restrictions on.  Whenever someone needs access to someone
elses folder (ie. holiday watch), symlinking should be sufficient.

I can start up dovecot, log in as a user (I authenticate against LDAP
btw), see the directories specified in my namespace directives be
created but I can't subscribe to anything.  Squirrelmail gives an error
stating "[TRYCREATE] Mailbox doesn't exist: archives" while
Thunderbird
shows the folder names in grey and refuses to subscribe.

Am I missing the point of namespaces or have I failed to create
something in the folders to get them to play?  I read something about a
dovecot-shared file but I think this is a 0.99 thing, although I tried
creating the file with the permissions I wanted applied to the folder
and it didn't do anything...

I did notice that when the folders are created, they are created owned
by the first user logged in.  I have tried chmod'ing them to 777 to see
if it makes a difference, but alas, no.

The relevant bit of dovecot.conf is:

namespace private {
   separator = /
   #prefix    #location    inbox = yes
   #hidden = yes
}

namespace public {
    separator = /
    prefix = announcements/
    location = maildir:/var/mail/announcements/Maildir
}

namespace shared {
    separator = /
    prefix = archives/
    location = maildir:/var/mail/archives/Maildir
}

I'm sure I'm just being picky, but a better explanation of namespaces in
the docs might be in order, maybe with some examples.  If I get this
sussed out, I'll put one in the wiki ;)

Any help much appreciated!

Kev

On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 09:58 +0000, Kev Latimer wrote:
> Am I missing the point of namespaces or have I failed to create
> something in the folders to get them to play?  I read something about a
> dovecot-shared file but I think this is a 0.99 thing, although I tried
> creating the file with the permissions I wanted applied to the folder
> and it didn't do anything...
> 
> I did notice that when the folders are created, they are created owned
> by the first user logged in.  I have tried chmod'ing them to 777 to see
> if it makes a difference, but alas, no.
dovecot-shared file is required in shared folders so that the created
files/dirs aren't 0700 by the user creating them.
> namespace public {
>     separator = /
>     prefix = announcements/
>     location = maildir:/var/mail/announcements/Maildir
> }
> 
> namespace shared {
>     separator = /
>     prefix = archives/
>     location = maildir:/var/mail/archives/Maildir
> }
Both should probably be namespace public, since "shared" is really
meant
for mailboxes that point to normal users' shared mailboxes. Other than
that, I'd think those should work as long as the users have permissions
to access them.
> I'm sure I'm just being picky, but a better explanation of
namespaces in
> the docs might be in order, maybe with some examples.  If I get this
> sussed out, I'll put one in the wiki ;)
http://wiki.dovecot.org/moin.cgi/SharedFolders mentions the
dovecot-shared file at least.. :)

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