[Dovecot] migration question: "imap server directory"

[Dan Price]

In prepping our IMAP migration to Dovecot, I've hit upon a small
issue: the "IMAP server directory" which Thunderbird users have
set in the "advanced" prefs.

Our old IMAP server seems to set your current directory to ~.
This wound up causing users to set their IMAP server directory to
"/home/<user>/mail/" so that their mailboxes would be found:

--> A104 LIST "/home/dp/mail/" "%"
    * LIST (\NoSelect) "/" /home/dp/mail/
    * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" /home/dp/mail/sent-mail-Jul-2006
    * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" /home/dp/mail/sent-mail-Dec-2004
    ...
    A104 OK LIST completed

Of course, relative paths also work, but it seems that not many users
are using them:

--> A105 LIST "mail/" "%"
    * LIST (\NoSelect) "/" mail/
    * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" mail/sent-mail-Jul-2006
    * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" mail/sent-mail-Dec-2004
    ...
    A105 OK LIST completed

Also, it turns out that some users have mail in "mail" and some in
"Mail".  So for now, with Dovecot, I've set:

    mail_location = mbox:~:INBOX=/var/mail/%u:INDEX=%h/Mail/imapd-indices

But users with absolute paths are having issues:

    A102 LIST "/home/dp/mail/" "%"
    A102 OK List completed.

Versus:

    A103 LIST "mail/" "%"
    * LIST (\Noselect \HasChildren) "/" "mail/"
    * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" "mail/sent-mail-Jul-2006"
    * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" "mail/sent-mail-Dec-2004"
    A103 OK List completed.

I've read the MailboxLocation page on the Wiki, but I'm not sure
of the best way to proceed and have things stay compatible for
my users.  It is possible to ask all users to change, but I'm
going to have to field a lot of questions if I ask users for that :/

Thanks!

        -dp

--
Daniel Price - Solaris Kernel Engineering - dp at eng.sun.com - blogs.sun.com/dp