[Dovecot] Having trouble getting Dovecot to read a ~/Maildir configuration

[William Blunn]

On 21/04/2011 03:32, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>
>> A question about where the mail is actually supposed to be delivered 
>> to...
>> initially I configured Exim4 to delivery the email to ~/Maildir and I 
>> noticed as you saw in the list directories like ~/Maildir/new and 
>> ~/Maildir/cur, however once I configured Evolution to login to 
>> Dovecot I noticed the directories ~/Maildir/INBOX/new and 
>> ~Maildir/INBOX/cur were created. Should therefore Exim4 be configured 
>> to ~/Maildir/INBOX instead of just ~/Maildir ?

It looks like your IMAP clients are configured to use a "server folder" 
of "INBOX" ... such a thing as you might need to do using Courier-IMAP 
(were you previously using Courier-IMAP?)

Your IMAP clients aren't seeing this folder so are creating it.

But configuring IMAP clients with a "server folder" of "INBOX" is not 
required with Dovecot because Dovecot does not require this "INBOX" 
prefix to all folders. (Though you can configure Dovecot to emulate the 
Courier-IMAP behaviour if you like.)

Exim is delivering to the root folder, but your IMAP clients are looking 
in the folder "INBOX". Because your clients are prefixing "INBOX" to all 
folder names, you can't get "up" to the root to see the messages.

Check the configuration of your IMAP clients to see if they have a 
"server folder" configured for "INBOX" (it may be called something other 
than "server folder" depending on what the IMAP client decides to call it).

Configuring Exim to deliver to $HOME/Maildir/ is normal and correct. You 
should get messages delivered as files to the directory $HOME/Maildir/new.

Configuring Dovecot with a mail location of maildir:~/Maildir is normal 
and correct and should cause Dovecot serve up (as the real IMAP INBOX 
folder, not a folder called "INBOX") the messages previously delivered 
by Exim using the above configuration.

There should be no need to specify LAYOUT=fs, unless you actually want that.

Check the configuration of your IMAP clients.

Another thing you could do is to make a fresh install of Thunderbird 3.1 
and see what that thinks is in that IMAP account.

A fresh install of Thunderbird 3.1 will not have any spurious "server 
folder" configured by default and should show you all the messages in 
the real INBOX (not a folder called "INBOX").

Once you can see the messages in Thunderbird, you will then know that it 
is a configuration issue in your other IMAP clients.

Regards,

Bill