[Dovecot] Read-only mail folders

[Chris Wakelin]

Of course, I meant "namespace private" (I'd just tried "public" in case 
it made any difference, but I think Dovecot doesn't really support 
shared folders yet).

Something like the following seems to work using the (undocumented?) 
CONTROL= option.

namespace private {
  separator = /
  prefix = "#snapshot/"
  location = maildir:%h/Maildir/.snapshot/nightly.0: \
    INDEX=/var/indexes/%u:CONTROL=/var/indexes/%u
  hidden = yes
}

dovecot-uidlist and temporary files seem to be created in the "CONTROL" 
directory.

Is it a good idea to use "CONTROL=" for NFS-mounted maildirs anyway 
(read-write ones as well) to store these files on the local filesystem?

Best Wishes,
Chris

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 09:11:37 +0000 (GMT Standard Time) Chris Wakelin 
<c.d.wakelin at reading.ac.uk> wrote:

> Is it possible to have folders on read-only partitions in Dovecot 
> 1.0-stable?
> 
> We have a NetApp fileserver which would probably be accessed via NFS 
> (though iSCSI is possible) and which stores readonly "snapshots" of 
> every directory accessible as .snapshot (but usually hidden from the 
> operating system). It would be very nice to set up a "snapshot" 
> namespace something like :-
> 
> namespace public {
>   separator = /
>   prefix = "#snapshot/"
>   location = maildir:%h/Maildir/.snapshot/nightly.0
>   hidden = yes
> }
> 
> so that users could recover messages from say yesterday's version of 
> their mailbox.
> 
> Unfortunately, Dovecot always seems to want to write to the directory, 
> even when indexes are stored elsewhere (as recommended with NFS anyway, 
> I think) using INDEX=whatever in the location line.
> 
> Best Wishes,
> Chris

--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--
Christopher Wakelin,                                c.d.wakelin at reading.ac.uk
IT Services Centre, The University of Reading,       Tel: +44 (0)118 378 8439
Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK                   Fax: +44 (0)118 975 3094