[Dovecot] POP3 only - why is cur/ growing?

[Roger Weeks]

There are at least a couple of mail clients that are configured to  
leave mail on the server by default using POP3.  Mail.app in OS X is  
one of them, and various versions of Eudora have been known to  
default to this setting as well.

If there is mail in the cur folder in the maildir, either the POP3  
client is configured to leave mail on the server, or you've got a  
webmail client reading the mail either using IMAP or reading directly  
from the maildirs (sqwebmail, for example).

I personally wish there was a way on the POP3 server to prohibit the  
"Leave Mail on Server" behavior, because it's a real pain in the  
ass.  This is why IMAP was built.  It's also one of the reasons we  
are moving to dovecot, because courier has major problems with  
duplicate emails when POP3 clients leave mail on the server.

--
Roger J. Weeks
Systems & Network Administrator
Mendocino Community Network

On Jan 5, 2006, at 6:06 AM, Wally Winchester wrote:

> Thanks for this.
>
> On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 14:05:16 +0000, "Simon Waters" <simonw at zynet.net>
> said:
>> On Thursday 05 Jan 2006 13:57, Wally Winchester wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> I use Sarge's dovecot for a pop3 mail collection server. IMAP is not
>>> used at all. It works well, but I would like to know why one of the
>>> accounts also keeps a copy of all e-mail copies in the cur/ folder?
>>
>> That is "maildir" not "IMAP".
>
> All mailboxes are maildir, but only POP3 is used to collect the mail.
> IMAP is not used at all, so I am confused about anything existing  
> in the
> cur/ folder.
>
>>
>> maildir is an alternative form of storing email.
>>
>> At a guess(!) the file name their email would have been stored in,
>> already
>> existed as a directory, so dovecot is trying to "cope" with an error.
>>
>> When they empty there inbox, just try renaming the whole folder, and
>> sending
>> them some email, if it creates an mbox you know what was wrong.
>
> I deleted the cur/ directory, and everything under it (since cur/  
> holds
> mails already downloaded).
> A test mail seems to work.
>
> I'll see if it happens again..
>
>>
>> Alternatively convert everyone to maildir.
> -- 
>   Wally Winchester
>   wally_winchester at fastmail.fm
>
> -- 
> http://www.fastmail.fm - And now for something completely different…
>