[Dovecot] basic understanding of imap in dovecot

[Jim Pazarena]

Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-12-23 at 10:44 -0800, dovecot at paz.bz wrote:
>> My MTA (exim) delivers email to:   /mail/user
>> dovecot, sucks that mail from /mail/user TO
>> /home/user/mail/<filenamesoffolders>
>
> No, it doesn't suck any email (by default anyway).
>
>> I suppose my question is, is there a way to have dovecot empty/parse the
>> original exim mailbox
>> so that the customer email isn't sitting in two spots,
>
> Dovecot should be using the mailbox directly without copying it.
>
> So you've misunderstood something, but without more information I can't
> really guess what it is.

You are sure a patient person !!

I tested my setup, and confirmed that dovecot isn't doing the things
which I suspected it was doing.

What is 'causing' this odd behavior is my use of Thunderbird MUA.
I created a new 'imap' account on Thunderbird, and started copying
the email from the old POP account into my Thunderbird 'IMAP' account.
It appears that it is Thunderbird which is uploading the email BACK to
the mail server as I copy it from the POP to the IMAP account within it.

Not sure if this is the 'correct' behavior for an MUA -- uploading back
to the server, but that IS why the home/user/mail directory is getting
populated... from Thunderbird uploads.

Can anyone point me at a tutorial on the 'abilities' of IMAP?

Jim