[Dovecot] How to serve a subset of IMAP folders for hand held devices.

[David Pottage]

On 28/12/11 10:39, Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik wrote:
> :2011-12-28T10:26:David Pottage:
>
>> I solved the problem by creating a second instance of dovecot running on
>> a non standard port, and configured it to serve only a subset my email
>> folders, so that way the email client on my smartphone works well and I
>> can read the emails I am interested in on the move.
> Here's a simple improvement.
> Create a new email user and symlink just those folders you want to see
> into it.
I considered that option but decided against it for two reasons.

Firstly I wanted to retain the option to switch to the full version of
my mail folders if I needed to access something urgently. My smart-phone
based email client allows me to change the port number of an existing
email account, but will not allow me to change the user-name without
creating a whole new account and re-downloading everything.

Secondly creating a second account makes the authentication on the
server a lot more complex. Either I need two OS level accounts on the
sever, and find ways to keep them in sync, or I need to create a custom
authentication method on dovecot or PAM so that when it receives a
user-name matching some pattern, it will check the password against a
different account.

In short, I think a second server with a separate configuration is more
scalable. I don't think it consumes much more resource compared with one
server.

> Using virtual folders could be helpful as well. I have a New mails one
> which shows me all new emails in all folders which helps in a lot of
> places.
Could you provide a link to documentation about virtual folders.

-- 
David Pottage