[Dovecot] Migrating from UW IMAP - pine - Thunderbird - squirrelmail

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Israel Bravo wrote:

> Hello!
>    I saw your post to the mailing list
> (http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2006-January/010968.html) where you
> write "A description for pine with imap acces without entering any
> password is  also discussed.", but I didn't find such description in
> this post.
>
>    Would you be so kind to point me to some source where it is
> explained - currently users have to insert the password twice - when
> they open the shell window and when they start Pine.

The passwordless access set up by that configuration is only applicable if 
you have Dovecot on the same server as Pine/Alpine (hereafter, *pine).

The relevant bits are:

rsh-open-timeout=30000
rsh-path=
rsh-command=/usr/sbin/dovecot --exec-mail imap

This subverts the 'rsh' mail access route to access localhost's dovecot 
installation directly. When *pine goes to connect via rsh, it will instead 
run dovecot, dropping into an IMAP connection without having to enter a 
password (since you're running locally -- PREAUTH).

I write "subverts", since I think this prevents a real 'rsh' connection 
from working properly. Plus, I'm not 100% sure this will always work 
properly. Dovecot running as a daemon has (at some point) root privileges. 
With my post-login script owned by root, I get:

Fatal: execv(/root/dovecot-login.sh) failed: Permission denied

Commenting my "mail_executable = /root/dovecot-login.sh" line fixes that, 
but it seems hack-ish that that's necessary.


>    Another question - may be you can help me: Currently we use Pine
> with IMAP (dovecot); both INBOX and folder collection are saved on the
> Linux server. But how to save the "saved-messages" and "sent-mail"
> folders in the user's home directory on the server?

This should happen fairly automatically, I think. I'm pretty sure *pine 
stores those in the first folder collection unless you override them.

inbox-path={cyrus.example.com/tls/user=username}INBOX
folder-collections="Cyrus Server" {cyrus.example.com/tls/user=username}INBOX.[],
... etc. ...

No special setup for saved-messages, as far as I can see. [<No value 
set: using default "saved-messages">], though my default FCC is INBOX. I 
don't use sent-mail.


Best,
Ben