dovecot - May 2013 - Empty file in maildirs

I am cleaning up some old users, and found that in every maildir folder there is
an empty file called maildirfolder, created at the time the original dovecot was
installed.

Is this empty file necessary for dovecot, or is it left there in an upgrade
proces and can it be removed?

Dovecot 2.1.7, on Debian wheezy.


-- 
Roel Wagenaar,

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On 20.5.2013, at 11.29, Roel Wagenaar <roel at wagenaar.nu> wrote:
> I am cleaning up some old users, and found that in every maildir folder
there is
> an empty file called maildirfolder, created at the time the original
dovecot was
> installed.
> 
> Is this empty file necessary for dovecot, or is it left there in an upgrade
> proces and can it be removed?
It's defined by Maildir++ specs. They're used by maildrop and maybe some
other Maildir++ tools that need to update the maildirsize quota file. Dovecot
itself doesn't care about if they exist or not, but it does create them
whenever you create a new folder, so you can't really get rid of them
completely.