[Dovecot] IMAP namespace and Courier migration

[Timo Sirainen]

On Sun, 2010-08-08 at 17:40 +0200, Yves Goergen wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> the migration guide from Courier-IMAP to Dovecot says that I should
> change the folders namespace to "INBOX." if I want a seamless migration.

Yes.

> Isn't it that e-mail clients determine that namespace automatically? At
> least I never needed to enter one in Thunderbird and then it was there.

You can of course try what happens, but not all clients have automatic
namespace configuration, and also some TB users also could have manually
explicitly overridden it.

> What happens if I copy the database, all the Maildir files, run the
> migration script to convert the special files and don't change that
> namespace - will clients show an error message and stop working or will
> it still work?

Probably the worst that can happen is that clients will show only INBOX
and users are panicking over what happened to their other mailboxes
until they change the configuration.

Alternatively you can create a hidden namespace with prefix=INBOX. that
such users would use. That should also be pretty much transparent for
most users. http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces -> Backwards
Compatibility: Courier IMAP