[Dovecot] why is there email in my mbox file?

[Kendall Shaw]

Ooops. Correction below:

Kendall Shaw <queshaw at pacbell.net> writes:

> Jochen Schulz <ml at well-adjusted.de> writes:
>
>> Kendall Shaw:
>>> 
>>> I expected dovecot to take the mail out of the mbox file and put it
>>> somewhere.
>>
>> Why should it do this? Dovecot normally tries to automatically detect
>> where your mailboxes are and if it finds them in one of the usual places
>> (for example your /var/mail/user) it uses this location.
>
> To be able to create folders and such that mbox doesn't describe and
> IMAP does maybe. In anycase, I wonder if you have more advice for me
> about converting to maildir.
>
>>> But, I see there's a big mbox file (/var/mail/me) that
>>> keeps growing. Is dovecot using that as the store of messages?
>>
>> Probably. Why don't you take a look?
>
> I've taken a look at the file and no thoughts appeared while I was doing that.
>
> I see there is both the file in /var/mail/me and in /home/me/.dovecot
> there are a number of files that seem to correspond to the IMAP
> folders.
>
> In dovecot.conf I have:
>
> default_mail_env = mbox:~/.dovecot/:INBOX=/var/mail/me
>
> It was unclear to me if the directory other than the one labeled INBOX
> was required. I was guessing that dovecot might take the messages out
> of the inbox and put them into the other path.
>
>>> If I were to move to using maildir instead of mbox, what is
>>> going to happen to my existing mail?
>>
>> Nothing. You would have to move your mboxes to maildir yourself.  You
>> can use programs like mb2md to do that.
>
> Thanks for this advice. I used mb2md to create a Maildir directory using:
>
> mb2md -m
> mb2md -s /var/mail/me -R

mb2md -s /home/me/.dovecot -R

Kendall

> I also changed dovecot.conf to use:
>
> default_mail_env = maildir:~/Maildir
>
> And changed exim to use Maildir instead of my mbox file, using the
> lines in the example for debian on the dovecot main page.
>
> The result is that I get no mail. The log file looks essentially the same with some variations.
>
> Using mbox, logging in looks like:
>
> Feb  8 14:42:52 pokey dovecot: IMAP(me): Effective uid=1000, gid=1000
> Feb  8 14:42:52 pokey dovecot: IMAP(me): mbox: data=/home/me/.dovecot/:INBOX=/var/mail/me
> Feb  8 14:42:52 pokey dovecot: IMAP(me): mbox: root=/home/me/.dovecot, index=/home/me/.dovecot, inbox=/var/mail/me
>
> Using maildir, logging in looks like:
>
> Feb  8 14:34:11 pokey dovecot: IMAP(me): Effective uid=1000, gid=1000
> Feb  8 14:34:11 pokey dovecot: IMAP(me): maildir: data=/home/me/Maildir
> Feb  8 14:34:11 pokey dovecot: IMAP(me): maildir: root=/home/me/Maildir, index=/home/me/Maildir, control=, inbox=
>
> Do I need to indicate where the inbox is somehow in default_mail_env?
>
> Kendall