[Dovecot] Dovecot IMAP and Mac OS X Mail.app

[Ronny Adsetts]

Hi All,

I recently switched our Courier IMAP server over to Dovecot primarily for
performance reasons. Server OS is Debian Sarge with Dovecot packages from
backports.org (v 1.0.rc2-1bpo1).

Access from Thunderbird and Horde worked fine with some shared folders
defined and the Courier compatibility private folder stanza. Initial
testing with Mail.app showed that, although the folder listing was fetched
correctly including all shared folders, no mail could be viewed with
Mail.app timing out with an error about invalid namespace. (I'll post the
exact error message as a follow up when I can test again later).

After searching the mailing list for a while, I came upon a message
suggesting adding a second private namespace like so:

namespace private {
   separator = .
   prefix = "INBOX."
   inbox = yes
   hidden = no
}

namespace private {
  separator = .
  prefix =
  inbox = yes
  hidden = yes
}

Now, this does work in a fashion and allows Mail.app to access the
folders and mail. Problem with this config:

* Mail.app displays all INBOX. folders at the top level *and* below Inbox
* Thunderbird displays a spurious INBOX folder in the folder listing under
Inbox.
* Horde displays folders at the top level and below Inbox.

Whilst not being a huge problem for our internal mail server, this is not
optimal.

Has anyone else had these or similar problems and managed to work them
out? If so, how did you configure Dovecot or the clients to all play
nicely together?

I'd quite like to roll Dovecot out on our client mail server but I need to
work this out first so any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

Ronny
-- 
Ronny Adsetts
Technical Director
Amazing Internet Ltd, London
t: +44 20 8607 9535
f: +44 20 8607 9536
w: www.amazinginternet.com