[Dovecot] namespaces, shared mailboxes

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007, Timo Sirainen wrote:

> On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 23:59 +0100, Alexander 'Leo' Bergolth wrote:
>> I'd like to provide shared mailboxes with maildir that should appear
>> like 'Shared/<mailboxname>' to the clients.
>>
>> Using the namespace configuration below, everything works fine, exept
>> one thing: Mail clients (only tested with Thunderbird) won't allow to
>> put mails directly in 'Shared/mailboxname' (the folder it is greyed
>> out). You currently have to create subfolders and put the mails in those
>> subfolders.
> ..
>> namespace shared {
>>   separator = /
>>   # hidden = yes
>>   prefix = Shared/spamrep/
>>   location =
>> maildir:/var/spool/mail/Shared/spamrep:CONTROL=~/Maildir/control/Shared/spamrep:INDEX=~/Mail\
>> dir/index/Shared/spamrep
>
> I find it strange that this kind of configuration even appears to
> work. :) If you somehow manage to get it working with v1.0, there's a
> good chance that it won't work anymore with v1.1.
>
> So if you want to access "Shared/spamrep" as a mailbox, the prefix must
> be Shared/.
>
> If you wanted users to have different views of what the mailboxes look
> like, you could just change the location to be different for different
> users. Create symlinks to the visible global mailboxes to those
> locations.

Having multiple namespaces setup that way seems reasonable to me.

e.g.
/var/spool/mail/Shared/tech/...
/var/spool/mail/Shared/financial/...

where 'Shared/tech' would be visible to many, but 'Shared/financial' would 
be visible only to execs/accountants. And both would show up under a 
common 'Shared/' prefix to keep them distinct from user folders.

It sounds like he just wants to be able to SELECT the root of a namespace.

Best,
Ben