[Dovecot] maildir and /var/spool/mail/$USER

[Rob Campbell]

Well, I have been using FC1 and i just saved the info and copied it over. 
So I saved /home and copied it over when I installed FC3 onto the new 
machine.  I guess I was using cyrus when in FC1, I don't know I didn't 
check it worked the way I needed so I didn't investigate.  So everyone's 
inbox was /var/spool/mail/$USER and all their mail 'folders' were in 
~/mail ie. sent-messages and any other folders they would have created. 
We all used PINE most of the time.  So I would like to keep that setup.  I 
use sendmail.  I guess I can use maildir=~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u. 
I will try that and see what happens.  Right now I have mail in my inbox 
but I can't access it other than from pine.

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, Magnus Holmgren wrote:

> Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 14:19:55 +0100
> From: Magnus Holmgren <holmgren at lysator.liu.se>
> To: dovecot at dovecot.org
> Subject: Re: [Dovecot] maildir and /var/spool/mail/$USER
> 
> Rob Campbell wrote:
>> I was told to use dovecot because it was easier than cyrus.  I just 
>> upgraded from fc1 to fc3.  I am not sure what fc1 used but I think it was 
>> cyrus and it worked perfect out of the box no configurations to do.  The 
>> new cyrus-imapd is not so simple so I got dovecot.  I see examples saying 
>> to use mbox=~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u but when I try that I cannot 
>> map mail folders that reside under ~/mail.  I have tried default_mail_env = 
>> maildir:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
>> default_mail_env = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u which is the setup 
>> i have now.  I get this error when trying to connect via evolution
>> error while scanning folders in "IMAP server localhost" imap command 
>> failed. invalid mask.
>> 
> To get this straight, what you want to do is to use the Maildir format and 
> store the mail in ~/mail, except that incoming mail is put in 
> /var/spool/mail/{username} by the mail delivery agent, right?
>
> What mail transport/delivery agent are you using? I myself have simply 
> default_mail_env = maildir:/var/mail/%u
> using Exim as MTA.
>
>