[Dovecot] mdbox: Cannot create subfolder called "dbox-Mails" (2.0beta5)

[William Blunn]

On 13/05/2010 10:14, William Blunn wrote:
> I am trying out "mdbox" under Dovecot 2.0beta5.
>
> Looking in the "mailboxes" directory under the mdbox storage root 
> ("~/dbox" in my case), I can see that the mail folders are mapped into 
> filesystem directories.
>
> But Dovecot seems to put all the message list information 
> ("dovecot.index.cache", "dovecot.index.log") for any given mail folder 
> into a directory called "dbox-Mails"...
>
> But this directory name exists in the same namespace as that used for 
> mail subfolders...
>
> So this means we cannot create a mail subfolder whose name is 
> "dbox-Mails"!

Looking at some new (1 Sep 2010) documentation from Timo at 
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailLocation, it looks like in the meantime we 
have grown a new configuration directive "DIRNAME" which can be used in 
the mailbox location specification to change the metadata directory name 
to something other than the default "dbox-Mails".

So if site mail admins are concerned about clashes with user mail 
folders called "dbox-Mails" they can choose another name for the 
metadata directory.

OK fine so far, but then I saw the next bit.

We can also use "DIRNAME" with Maildir (if we have also specified 
LAYOUT=fs) to specify that {new,cur,tmp} folders should be stored in a 
subdirectory named by DIRNAME. This prevents clashes between user mail 
folder names and the {new,cur,tmp} folders. It is then up to the site 
admin to choose a value for DIRNAME which they think won't clash with 
user mail folder names.

OK, but then it occurred to me, if we can use DIRNAME with Maildir, how 
about LAYOUT with dbox?

How about having the ability to specify Maildir++ folder layout under 
dbox? For example:

# Note: Following configuration line is hypothetical
mail_location = mdbox:~/mdbox:LAYOUT=maildir++

~/mdbox/mailboxes/dbox-Mails  (mail folder INBOX)
~/mdbox/mailboxes/.foo/dbox-Mails  (mail folder foo)
~/mdbox/mailboxes/.foo.bar/dbox-Mails  (mail folder foo/bar)
~/mdbox/mailboxes/.foo.bar.baz/dbox-Mails  (mail folder foo/bar/baz)

One upshot of this would be that user folder names would be in a 
different namespace to the DIRNAME folder.

Also for admins who prefer fewer filesystem directory levels, this would 
make them happy because all the mail folder levels would be at a single 
directory level in the filesystem.

I suppose another upshot would be that it would look more like 
Maildir++, which admins may already be familiar with, and might provide 
a smoother/easier (mental) transition to dbox for admins.

Bill