[Dovecot] Dovecot 1.0.3: mbox problems for newly created users

[Bernd Kuhls]

Hi,

I am having problems with Dovecot 1.0.3 and Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 when
using a new user account without any mbox files present.

Directory /home/$user/.imap_mail/ does not exist when Thunderbird first
tries to login using IMAP to the account. On login this directory is
created with a zero byte Trash file and .subscriptions containing string
"Trash", so far, so good.

Now I create a new message in Thunderbird and save it as draft. A zero
byte file "Drafts" is created in /home/$user/.imap_mail/ but the message
I wanted to save got _lost_, /home/$user/.imap_mail/Drafts stays at zero
bytes. The next message I try to save as draft finds its way to the Drafts
mbox however.

Please note that no /home/$user/.imap_mail/inbox has been created although
a inbox is shown in Thunderbird. When I move the saved message from Drafts
to the inbox folder shown in Thunderbird, it gets saved in /var/mail/$user
instead of /home/$user/.imap_mail/inbox, I guess this is due to the use
of the mbox_snarf plugin, right?

/home/$user/.imap_mail/inbox is the maildrop for Exim, which handles
incoming mails, but in this scenario the user did not receive any
emails yet.

If I manually create /home/$user/.imap_mail/inbox, then moving a message
from Drafts to the Thunderbird-displayed inbox works.

How to fix this problem? Especially messages getting lost is really bad
because I am in the process of changing our mail server setup from
Exim/UW-Imapd to Exim/Dovecot, where I have to move 100+ /var/mail/$user
mbox files to /home/$user/.imap_mail/inbox. But when Dovecot can not
properly save files to previous non-existing mbox files, like Drafts,
this is really a problem.

Greetings, Bernd Kuhls

PS: Here are the Dovecot settings:
# dovecot -n
# 1.0.3: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
log_path: /var/log/dovecot/dovecot.main
log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S
protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3-login
mail_extra_groups: mail
mail_location: 
mbox:~/.imap_mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u:INDEX=/var/mail/indexes/%u
mail_executable(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugins(default): quota imap_quota mbox_snarf
mail_plugins(imap): quota imap_quota mbox_snarf
mail_plugins(pop3): mbox_snarf
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/pop3
imap_client_workarounds(default): outlook-idle netscape-eoh 
tb-extra-mailbox-sep delay-newmail
imap_client_workarounds(imap): outlook-idle netscape-eoh 
tb-extra-mailbox-sep delay-newmail
imap_client_workarounds(pop3): outlook-idle
pop3_uidl_format(default):
pop3_uidl_format(imap):
pop3_uidl_format(pop3): %08Xu%08Xv
auth default:
   passdb:
     driver: pam
   userdb:
     driver: passwd
plugin:
   quota: fs
   mbox_snarf: ~/.imap_mail/inbox