dovecot - Sep 2006 - bug report, from apple.com

Bruce includes detailed information including the imap session.   Bruce 
works at Apple, on the Apple Mail.app product.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bruce Arthur <barthur at apple.com>
To: dovecot at dovecot.org
Cc: Bruce Arthur <barthur at apple.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:04:35 -0700
Subject: Problem using Apple Mail with Dovecot

Server Configuration:
dovecot-1.0.rc6
Built with: ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
OS: FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE i386  running on ufs

Client configuration
Mac OS X 10.4.7, using Apple Mail client.

Issue:
Apple Mail is able to connect to the server, but it is not seeing the
available folder correctly.

I did a little debugging and it looks like dovecot is failing to
provide the separator in response to the LIST command. I did not spend
anytime trying to figure out how other mail clients are getting this
(my tcpdump is a little rusty these days). Here is what I see Mail
sending to the server, and it's responses.

1 LOGIN applecot ********
1 OK Logged in.
2 CAPABILITY
* CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SASL-IR SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND
UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS
2 OK Capability completed.
3 LIST "" ""
3 OK List completed.

The "LIST" command should be sending back the mailbox separator. The
IMAP spec seems pretty clear about this (but reading RFC's is always a
bit of a challenge).

  From the RFC: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2060.txt
6.3..8.  LIST Command

     Arguments:  reference name
                 mailbox name with possible wildcards

     Responses:  untagged responses: LIST

     Result:     OK - list completed
                 NO - list failure: can't list that reference or name
                 BAD - command unknown or arguments invalid


        An empty ("" string) reference name argument indicates that
the
        mailbox name is interpreted as by SELECT. The returned mailbox
        names MUST match the supplied mailbox name pattern.  A non-empty
        reference name argument is the name of a mailbox or a level of
        mailbox hierarchy, and indicates a context in which the mailbox
        name is interpreted in an implementation-defined manner.

        An empty ("" string) mailbox name argument is a special
request to
        return the hierarchy delimiter and the root name of the name given
        in the reference.  The value returned as the root MAY be null if
        the reference is non-rooted or is null.  In all cases, the
        hierarchy delimiter is returned.  This permits a client to get the
        hierarchy delimiter even when no mailboxes by that name currently
        exist.



      Example:    C: A101 LIST "" ""
                 S: * LIST (\Noselect) "/" ""
                 S: A101 OK LIST Completed
                 C: A102 LIST #news.comp.mail.misc ""
                 S: * LIST (\Noselect) "." #news.
                 S: A102 OK LIST Completed
                 C: A103 LIST /usr/staff/jones ""
                 S: * LIST (\Noselect) "/" /
                 S: A103 OK LIST Completed
                 C: A202 LIST ~/Mail/ %
                 S: * LIST (\Noselect) "/" ~/Mail/foo
                 S: * LIST () "/" ~/Mail/meetings
                 S: A202 OK LIST completed

-- Bruce

-------

From: Jason Fesler <jfesler at gigo.com>
To: Bruce Arthur <barthur at apple.com>
Cc: dovecot at dovecot.org
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:41:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Problem using Apple Mail with Dovecot
> Server Configuration:
> dovecot-1.0.rc6
> Built with: ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
> OS: FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE i386  running on ufs
Thanks, Bruce.  Timo et all; Bruce specifically has been looking
at my instance of dovecot after a friend of his reported problems
with Mail.app and my server.

More information:
    Stock dovecot namespaces work;

    This name space does not:

namespace private {
     separator = .
     prefix = INBOX.
     inbox = yes
     hidden = no
}
namespace private {
      separator = /
      inbox = no
      hidden = yes
      prefix = "#mail/"
      location = mbox:/home/%u/mail
}

On 6.9.2006, at 19.01, Jason Fesler wrote:
> 3 LIST "" ""
> 3 OK List completed.
..
> namespace private {
>     separator = .
>     prefix = INBOX.
>     inbox = yes
>     hidden = no
> }
> namespace private {
>      separator = /
>      inbox = no
>      hidden = yes
>      prefix = "#mail/"
>      location = mbox:/home/%u/mail
> }
You could work around this by creating yet another hidden namespace  
with empty prefix. But yea, I guess it's still a bug in Dovecot.  
Although I'm not exactly sure what separator it should return in that  
case. Probably either the first non-hidden namespace's, or the  
inbox=yes namespace's..

BTW. for everyone reading this: I'm way too busy right now to even  
read this list. Just moved to another city, school started and I'm  
late in work related stuff.. Hopefully things will quiet down in a  
few weeks :)
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> You could work around this by creating yet another hidden namespace with 
> empty prefix. But yea, I guess it's still a bug in Dovecot. Although
I'm not
> exactly sure what separator it should return in that case. Probably either 
> the first non-hidden namespace's, or the inbox=yes namespace's..
Bruce believed the problem was not so much the prefix but the seperator. 
In any case, I'd recommend advertising the inbox=yes namespace.
I'll be glad to test any code changes and report back to Bruce Arther 
<barther at apple.com>.

My workaround was to set up a second dovecot instance, "stock", on a 
different IP, with a different (signed, ug) certificate.  In that 
configuration, the assumptions Apple Mail.app makes, work.

Fatou Ndiaye schrieb:
>Hi all,
>
>How can we reconstruct a corrupted mailbox with dovecot ?
>  
>
You do not say which mail storage format you use.

Jakob Curdes

> You could work around this by creating yet another hidden namespace with 
> empty prefix. But yea, I guess it's still a bug in Dovecot. Although
I'm not
FYI, I tried this.  apple's mail works, and thunderbird works, but.. 
squirrelmail for some reason sees this hidden name space, and starts 
showing users two sets of heirarchies of the same folders (one as INBOX.*, 
which was prefered, plus again without a prefix).
> exactly sure what separator it should return in that case. Probably either 
> the first non-hidden namespace's, or the inbox=yes namespace's..
Maybe defer this problem to the administrator to define.  What seperator 
to return, when list "" "" is asked for, and there is no
namespace with an
empty prefix defined.  I suspect the number of people this affects is 
small - folks not using an empty prefix name space, ie idiots like me 
trying to seamlessly adapt the previous mail server's appearances when 
moving to dovecot.