dovecot - Feb 2012 - Virtual Folders

Hello, 

I am trying to get virtual folders to work properly, and I
can't seem to. I will be as detailed as possible to remove confusion.
Thank you in advance. 

Goal: 

Essentially, a gmail clone, but one that
I can make work on cPanel hosts with roundcube and squirrel mail, etc.


By default, cpanel creates user mail dir structure of (maildir++)
inbox, drafts, sent, junk, and trash (with no dovecot specific files
until first login) 

I would like to replace all those folders with
virtual representations with more capabilities. I would like to achieve
the conversation view that gmail has pulled off so well. 

cPanel,
stock, generates the following dovecot -n: (i am still not sure how it
negotiates mail_location yet) 

# 1.2.17: /etc/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux
2.6.18-238.5.1.el5xen x86_64 CentOS release 5.7 (Final)
ssl_cert_file:
/etc/dovecot/ssl/dovecot.crt
ssl_key_file:
/etc/dovecot/ssl/dovecot.key
ssl_cipher_list:
ALL:!ADH:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:-LOW:-SSLv2:-EXP
login_dir:
/var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable:
/usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_process_per_connection:
no
login_processes_count: 10
login_max_processes_count:
100
login_max_connections: 500
mail_max_userip_connections:
200
maildir_copy_preserve_filename: yes
mail_plugins: quota
imap_quota
namespace:
 type: private
 prefix: INBOX.
 inbox: yes
 list:
yes
 subscriptions: yes
lda:
 postmaster_address:
postmaster at example.com
auth default:
 mechanisms: plain login

cache_size: 2048
 username_chars:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789!#$-=?^_{}~./@+%

passdb:
 driver: checkpassword
 args:
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/dovecot-auth
 userdb:
 driver: prefetch
 socket:

type: listen
 client:
 path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-client
 mode:
438
plugin:
 quota: maildir
 quota_rule: Trash:ignore

I started a test
box with Debian running the same version of dovecot (1.2.x) and on that
system I run into problems every time I make a virtual folder a root
folder. I assume it is trying to look up a normal folder instead of the
virtual ones and I am confusing it. 

So I came here because it would be
really really neat if I could pull this off. 

Again, thank you in
advance. 

-cornfeed

On Fri, 2012-02-24 at 08:27 -0600, jacob at alltechservices-ia.com wrote:
> Essentially, a gmail clone, but one that
> I can make work on cPanel hosts with roundcube and squirrel mail, etc.
> 
> By default, cpanel creates user mail dir structure of (maildir++)
> inbox, drafts, sent, junk, and trash (with no dovecot specific files
> until first login) 
> 
> I would like to replace all those folders with
> virtual representations with more capabilities. I would like to achieve
> the conversation view that gmail has pulled off so well. 
It's kind of possible to do that, but Dovecot has some problems with
updating the view I think. Or maybe it was only when email was deleted
that it didn't properly update the view.
> namespace:
>  type: private
>  prefix: INBOX.
>  inbox: yes
>  list:
> yes
>  subscriptions: yes
This is your real mail's namespace.
> box with Debian running the same version of dovecot (1.2.x) and on that
> system I run into problems every time I make a virtual folder a root
> folder. I assume it is trying to look up a normal folder instead of the
> virtual ones and I am confusing it. 
namespace {
  prefix   separator = /
  location = virtual:/etc/dovecot/virtual:INDEX=~/Maildir/virtual
  inbox = yes
}

namespace {
  prefix = RealMails/
  separator = /
  list = no
  hidden = yes
}

This has the problem that user now can't create any mailboxes other than
what you have created globally..

There's really no automatic way to do this.