Hello! I run Dovecot on CentOS 4 (dovecot-1.1.4-0_81.el4), and I *also* run the "Alpine" mail system that comes with that OS. Alpine still writes out the 'FOLDER INTERNAL DATA' pseudo-message at the beginning of each user's mbox, but dovecot does not. I make use of that record as a simle/quick way to verify when a user actually last read their e-mail (for administrative purposes, identifying stale/unused accounts), so is there any way to configure/command dovecot to write (or update) these hidden messages? (Note: I tried looking in the archives, but most references seemed to be about this message being a 'side effect' of transferring *from* UW IMAP, and how to get 'rid' of it. Not what I need. :) Apologies if this was covered before in a different thread.) - Charles
On Fri, 2009-01-23 at 12:48 -0500, Charles Gregory wrote:> Hello! > > I run Dovecot on CentOS 4 (dovecot-1.1.4-0_81.el4), and I *also* run the > "Alpine" mail system that comes with that OS. Alpine still writes out the > 'FOLDER INTERNAL DATA' pseudo-message at the beginning of each user's > mbox, but dovecot does not. I make use of that record as a simle/quick way > to verify when a user actually last read their e-mail (for administrative > purposes, identifying stale/unused accounts), so is there any way to > configure/command dovecot to write (or update) these hidden messages?Dovecot writes the pseudo message when the mailbox is emptied (all messages are expunged). Maybe the difference is that Alpine writes the pseudo message also when creating the mailbox (or when selecting the created empty mailbox). I guess Dovecot could do that too then.. but I don't really want to waste time on writing that code. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20090123/8757b314/attachment-0002.bin>
On Fri, 23 Jan 2009, Timo Sirainen wrote:>> I run Dovecot on CentOS 4 (dovecot-1.1.4-0_81.el4), and I *also* run the >> "Alpine" mail system... > Dovecot writes the pseudo message when the mailbox is emptied (all > messages are expunged).Hmmmm. It looks like *some* of my users are having their *old* pseudo-message left in place even after they have read and expunged. If this is a concern to you, I will do some tests to verify.... But even if it works as described above, it would not be a consistent timestamp of when someone last read their mailbox. It looks like dovecot updates the ~/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.log with each read, even via pop3, so I should be okay using that.... I can then just use a snip of code to check whether that file or the pseudo-message from Alpine is 'newer'.....> Maybe the difference is that Alpine writes the pseudo message also when > creating the mailbox (or when selecting the created empty mailbox).Alpine actually updates the message with each read. In particular, it updates the "X-IMAP:" line.....> I guess Dovecot could do that too then.. but I don't really want to > waste time on writing that code.Not a problem. I think that timestamp will do the trick. Thanks! - Charles