[Dovecot] Locking strategy?

[Glenn Leavell]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 06:01:16PM +0100, Gerhard Wiesinger wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> I finally got dovecot to work with pine. I will post some instructions how 
> to configure dovecot, Thunderbird and pine later on.
> 
> One thing is left:
> A telnet to port 143 and /usr/sbin/dovecot --exec-mail imap behaves 
> slightly different and a consistent configuration for subscription 
> folders is not possible (looks like it has a different base directory, in 
> the first case ~/ as configured in /etc/dovecot.conf and in the second case 
> ~/Mail (it is not set in the environment))
> 
> /usr/sbin/dovecot --exec-mail imap
> * PREAUTH [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND 
> UNSELECT IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS] Logged in as userx
> 1 lsub "" "~/Mail/*"
> 1 OK Lsub completed.
> 
> Mozilla: with or without ssl
> 3 lsub "" "~/Mail/*"
> * LSUB () "/" "~/Mail/Drafts"
> * LSUB () "/" "~/Mail/Templates"
> * LSUB () "/" "~/Mail/Trash"
> 3 OK Lsub completed.
> 
> Through Port 143:
> 1 LIST "" %
> returns list from ~/
> 
> Through command /usr/sbin/dovecot --exec-mail imap
> 1 LIST "" %
> returns list from ~/Mail
> 
> Maybe this comes from this TODO (from file TODO):
> - dovecot --exec-mail imap doesn't set MAIL environment?
> 
> Can this be fixed easily? Where does ~/Mail come from?
> 
> Thank you for the answer.
> 
> Ciao,
> Gerhard


Are you sure that the environment variable MAIL isn't set in your shell?
The default mail location is typically set with the default_mail_env
setting in dovecot.conf.  However, dovecot will use the MAIL environment
variable if it's set in your shell.  If you want to force the environment
when calling dovecot from your shell, you could use the env command similar
to this:

env MAIL=mbox:%h/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u /usr/sbin/dovecot --exec-mail imap

Glenn