[Dovecot] Question about ACL/flags

[Eric Jon Rostetter]

Quoting Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi>:

> You can't have per-user seen flags with mbox currently. So create a
> public namespace with a maildir location and set up dovecot-acl file in
> a way that allows only some specific users access to it. So for example:

To refresh, I want a shared account, but my system was Dovecot 1.1 with
all mbox mailboxes.  Well, this is what I've done so far:

1) Upgraded to dovecot 1.2 (just because I could, I guess)

2) Tried to setup private/public namespaces...  Edited "dovecot -n" output:

# 1.2.4: /etc/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.18-128.4.1.el5.centos.plus x86_64 CentOS release 5.3 (Final)
[...]
mail_location:  
mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u:INDEX=/var/dovecot/indexes/
%u
[...]
mail_plugins(default): zlib acl
mail_plugins(imap): zlib acl
mail_plugins(pop3): zlib
[...]
namespace:
   type: private
   separator: /
   inbox: yes
   list: yes
   subscriptions: yes
namespace:
   type: public
   separator: /
   prefix: shared/
   location:  
maildir:/var/spool/mail/public:INDEX=/var/dovecot/indexes/public/%u
   list: no
lda:
   postmaster_address: postmaster at physics.utexas.edu
   hostname: mail.ph.utexas.edu
   log_path:
   info_log_path:
   syslog_facility: mail
auth default:
   passdb:
     driver: ldap
     args: /etc/dovecot-ldap.conf
   userdb:
     driver: ldap
     args: /etc/dovecot-ldap.conf
plugin:
   acl: vfile

3) Created /var/spool/mail/public/.myfolder for the account to deliver to.
    Created empty dovecot-shared file for it.

4) Created a .forward file in the account to run "deliver" which does in
    fact deliver the account's email to the right maildir location.

5) Created /var/spool/mail/public/.myfolder/dovecot-acl which has something
    like:

owner lrwstiekxa
user=me lrwstiekxa
user=you   lrst

So, mail is delivered to this account correctly as a maildir mailbox.
But, I don't know how to read it, and/or configured something incorrectly.

It appears to be there, more or less:

a0 namespace
* NAMESPACE (("" "/")) NIL (("shared/" "/"))
a0 OK Namespace completed.
a0 list "" "shared/"
* LIST (\Noselect \HasNoChildren) "/" "shared/"
a0 OK List completed.

But I can't figure out how to access it (either manuall via telnet as above,
or from a client, etc).

So, how do I access it, and/or what did I do wrong?

While I've been doing email servers since the 1980's, this is my first
try at using IMAP namespaces and shared folders, and I'm just not getting
it... :(

-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

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