On Sun 16 Sep 2007, Jos Vos wrote:> > Just to be clear what I am saying. > > Suppose you have a standard maildir setup on computer X, > > with directories ~/Maildir/inbox/[cur,new,tmp]/ , > > ~/Maildir/family/[cur,new,tmp]/ , etc. > > > > Suppose now you start dovecot IMAP on computer X. > > Then you will not be able to see the family folder on computer Y, > > running as an IMAP client, ie with an IMAP kmail account > > pointing to computer X. > > > > If I am right, you have to re-organise and re-name the folders on X > > if you want to see them on Y. > > And if you do this, you can no longer seem them on X with kmail. > > Dovecot has both mbox and Maildir format support.I find the statement that dovecot has maildir format support misleading. By maildir support, I mean that mail is contained in directories ~/Maildir/inbox/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp], ~/Maildir/Finance/[cur,new,tmp], etc. This is the setup created if one runs kmail as mail client, specifying that one is using maildir format, and using the GUI to create new folders Family, Finance, etc. As far as I can see, if you now set up an IMAP server using dovecot on this machine, setting mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/ in /etc/dovecot.conf then the email in the folders Family, Finance, etc will not be seen by an IMAP client.> But as soon as you have an e-mail klant using a non-supported mailbox > format *or* that is storing mail folders in a supported format but in > a non-standard place, tour theory applies, yes.What is the "standard" place for mail folders?> See also <http://wiki.dovecot.org/> for more info about this all.I've studied that wiki, and not found clear information on this point. To clarify my question, suppose one has email organised in server X as described above, in directories ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp/ , etc. And now suppose one wants to access this email from laptop Y. How exactly does one have to change the setup on machine X? And what does one set mail_location to? It seems to me that this is an issue likely to be faced by anyone wanting to run a small home network. reading email on various machines, and wanting this email to be kept "in sync". Maybe dovecot is not a suitable program for this purpose?
On Sun, 2007-09-16 at 13:03 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:> > Dovecot has both mbox and Maildir format support. > > I find the statement that dovecot has maildir format support misleading. > > By maildir support, I mean that mail is contained in directories > ~/Maildir/inbox/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp], > ~/Maildir/Finance/[cur,new,tmp], etc.That's one way to implement multiple mailboxes to Maildir format, but there's no such standard.> As far as I can see, if you now set up an IMAP server using dovecot > on this machine, setting > mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/ > in /etc/dovecot.conf > then the email in the folders Family, Finance, etc > will not be seen by an IMAP client.With v1.1 you can do this with: mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs> To clarify my question, suppose one has email organised in server X > as described above, in directories ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp/ , etc. > And now suppose one wants to access this email from laptop Y. > How exactly does one have to change the setup on machine X? > And what does one set mail_location to?Why do you want it to work like that? Can't you just use the Maildir++ layout and use the email only via IMAP?> It seems to me that this is an issue likely to be faced by anyone > wanting to run a small home network. > reading email on various machines, > and wanting this email to be kept "in sync".If you use only IMAP, there should be no problem. -------------- 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/20070916/589a73a3/attachment-0002.bin>
Timo Sirainen wrote:>> > Dovecot has both mbox and Maildir format support. >> >> I find the statement that dovecot has maildir format support misleading. >> >> By maildir support, I mean that mail is contained in directories >> ~/Maildir/inbox/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp], >> ~/Maildir/Finance/[cur,new,tmp], etc. > > That's one way to implement multiple mailboxes to Maildir format, but > there's no such standard.First of all, thank you for responding, and (more importantly) for dovecot. I wasn't suggesting that the maildir format I described was "standard", just that it is the one you will get if you set up an email system using kmail in the usual way. It could therefore be described as a "normal" maildir format; and if dovecot does not like this format, I think this should be explained clearly in the dovecot documentation. [I didn't find the Maildir vs Maildir++ account very illuminating.]>> As far as I can see, if you now set up an IMAP server using dovecot >> on this machine, setting >> mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/ >> in /etc/dovecot.conf >> then the email in the folders Family, Finance, etc >> will not be seen by an IMAP client. > > With v1.1 you can do this with: > > mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fsI'm not clear what this means. Dovecot-1.1 has not yet come to Fedora 7, which I use, but I would be more than happy to compile it, if you are saying that I could then stick with my present mail setup on my server?>> To clarify my question, suppose one has email organised in server X >> as described above, in directories ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp/ , etc. >> And now suppose one wants to access this email from laptop Y. >> How exactly does one have to change the setup on machine X? >> And what does one set mail_location to? > > Why do you want it to work like that? Can't you just use the Maildir++ > layout and use the email only via IMAP?I would be quite happy to do this, but when I tried briefly re-naming ~/Maildir/Family/ to ~/Maildir/.Family/ on my server and re-started dovecot it did not seem to work - I did not see the Family folder on my client (using IMAPS). I wonder if I could press you to say exactly how I should change the setup on the server, and also how I should define mail_location in dovecot.conf , and what I should set DEFAULT to in .procmailrc ? Or point me to some location where this is set out - I didn't find any explicit instructions like this in the dovecot wiki.
Timo Sirainen wrote:>> To clarify my question, suppose one has email organised in server X >> as described above, in directories ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp/ , etc. >> And now suppose one wants to access this email from laptop Y. >> How exactly does one have to change the setup on machine X? >> And what does one set mail_location to? > > Why do you want it to work like that? Can't you just use the Maildir++ > layout and use the email only via IMAP? > >> It seems to me that this is an issue likely to be faced by anyone >> wanting to run a small home network. >> reading email on various machines, >> and wanting this email to be kept "in sync". > > If you use only IMAP, there should be no problem.Just a note to say I have everything working fine now. As suggested, I am basically using IMAP for everything. Looking back, there were two problems. Firstly, for some reason I kept getting a warning that the "resource .INBOX.directory" could not be found (this is not the exact message). Secondly, it took an extraordinarily long time for the IMAPS directory on my laptop to appear. In fact, it only appeared (to my surprise) when I re-booted the laptop after several hours. I take it that this was somehow related to SSL or TSL authentication. I found that I had to move my old ~/Maildir/Folder/cur/* messages "by hand" to the IMAP folder created by kmail at ~/Maildir/.Folder/new/ ; kmail did not allow me to move messages from a Local folder to an IMAP folder, although it saw both. Incidentally, as far as I can see one has to keep a Local account on kmail, as well as an IMAP account, since eg sent mail goes to ~/Maildir/sent-mail/cur/ . I didn't find any kmail setting to change this. Also, I assume it is sensible to leave the trash folder on the local machine. One tiny query; my .procmailrc has DEFAULT set to $HOME/Maildir/ ,which seems to work fine. Someone suggested it should be set to $HOME/Maildir/new/ ? In any case, dovecot IMAPS is working perfectly now, as I said. Thank you very much for what seems an excellent program. I had previously tried to set up a Cyrus IMAP server, but for one reason or another this did not work (under Fedora 7).