dovecot - Mar 2007 - Prayer, Maildir and Folders whose names begin with "."

Greetings -

I think I've just had one of my fears confirmed: not Dovecot-specific  
exactly, but it affects how we will use of Prayer (Webmail Software)  
with Dovecot...

Currently our production service uses MBX-format mailboxes with the  
UW IMAP server; we also use the University of Cambridge "Prayer"  
software for Webmail.

By default Prayer saves its preference settings, address book and so  
on in a regular IMAP folder called ".prayer"  And one of the nice  
things about the UW IMAP server is that you can tell it not to  
include files whose names start "." when returning the list of  
folders for a LIST command.  This means:

   * People don't see the secret ".prayer" folder when they look
at
the list;
   * But if something (eg, Prayer) knows its name it can open this  
folder to
     get at its content.

The combination of these is that (a) Prayer can store its settings  
and (b) users don't see where, so can't open/tamper with the secret  
settings folder for Prayer.

But I've just discovered that I can't create a folder called  
".prayer" using Maildir-format mailboxes.  The problem appears to be  
the leading "."  I suspect it's because the Maildir++
specification at
     http://www.inter7.com/courierimap/README.maildirquota.html
says this:

 > Folders are created as subdirectories under the main Maildir. The  
name of
 > the subdirectory always starts with a period. For example, a  
folder named
 > "Important" will be a subdirectory called
".Important". You can't
have
 > subdirectories that start with two periods.

A folder named ".prayer" would lead to a subdirectory being created  
called "..prayer" I think.

Q.  Can anyone confirm that you can't create Maildir folders called
     ".somename"?

Q.  Are there any other Prayer users out there using Dovecot and Maildir
     format mailboxes?  What are you doing about the user-settings  
folder
     for Prayer?  (And do you manage to hide it from view, so they can't
     tamper with its contents?)

Cheers,
Mike B-)

-- 
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York Yo10 5DD, UK
Tel:+44-1904-433811  FAX:+44-1904-433740

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On Fri, 2007-03-09 at 17:35 +0000, Mike Brudenell wrote:
> Q.  Can anyone confirm that you can't create Maildir folders called
>      ".somename"?
Yep. If you want that, there's really no other way than to modify the
sources for now. src/lib-storage/index/maildir/maildir-storage.h and
change MAILDIR_FS_SEP and MAILDIR_FS_SEP_S to something else.

Then if you also want to hide the .Prayer mailbox.. Well, you could
actually use ACL plugin and create a global ACL for ".Prayer" mailbox
which gives owner all the rights except "l".
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Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-03-09 at 17:35 +0000, Mike Brudenell wrote:
>> Q.  Can anyone confirm that you can't create Maildir folders called
>>      ".somename"?
> 
> Yep. If you want that, there's really no other way than to modify the
> sources for now. src/lib-storage/index/maildir/maildir-storage.h and
> change MAILDIR_FS_SEP and MAILDIR_FS_SEP_S to something else.
> 
> Then if you also want to hide the .Prayer mailbox.. Well, you could
> actually use ACL plugin and create a global ACL for ".Prayer"
mailbox
> which gives owner all the rights except "l".
We don't use maildir so this hasn't been an issue for us. You can
configure the settings folder name within Prayer, of course, by editing
prayer.cf.

I actually wanted "dotfiles" to be allowed to be visible (i.e. decided
by the client), and at one time had a patch do allow this (when Dovecot
hid all dotfiles to prevent access to ".imap"). I guess you're
worried
that a user will delete the folder? There are rare cases where access to
client configs stored in folders has been useful, e.g. things like
copying and pasting address books.

In any case, Timo's suggestion of a global ACL, together with renaming
the folder "prayer.config" or something sounds good!

Chris

-- 
--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+-
Christopher Wakelin,                           c.d.wakelin at reading.ac.uk
IT Services Centre, The University of Reading,  Tel: +44 (0)118 378 8439
Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK              Fax: +44 (0)118 975 3094

On Friday 09 March 2007 18:35, Mike Brudenell wrote:
> Greetings -
>
> I think I've just had one of my fears confirmed: not Dovecot-specific
> exactly, but it affects how we will use of Prayer (Webmail Software)
> with Dovecot...
You may be interested in some of the patches I've written for Prayer. They 
come in the form of a Quilt patch series inside a Debian diff, so it's not 
completely trivial to extract the useful bits unless you have a Debian box, 
but it's really nothing more than a patch-patch.

http://www.kibibyte.se/download/debian/prayer_1.0.18-1.diff.gz

The individual patches are:
10_makefile_install_config.patch - Debian specific patches to the build
20_session_unix_bugs.patch
20_session_server_bugs.patch - these two fix small but annoying bugs.
20_hasnochildren_means_noinferiors.patch - makes at least leaf folders be 
treated as folders
20_pidfiles_extension.patch - simply adds the .pid extension to the pid files
25_ipv6.patch - big patch that adds IPv6 support
30_utf8.patch - big patch that adds UTF-8 and modified UTF-7 support, meaning 
you can have folders with unicode characters and send and read international 
mail decently.
35_sighandling.patch - half done, don't use.

-- 
Magnus Holmgren        holmgren at lysator.liu.se
                       (No Cc of list mail needed, thanks)

  "Exim is better at being younger, whereas sendmail is better for 
   Scrabble (50 point bonus for clearing your rack)" -- Dave Evans
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