[Dovecot] debugging mail_location issues

[Walt Shekrota]

Type of Maildir structure I am using came from KDE. No '.'s just folders.
something like 
Maildir/
 INBOX
 mail-sent
 outbox
 other

where each has cur new and  tmp folders.
if I access this directory with IMAP it creates cur new and tmp in the root.
ie
Maildir/
 INBOX
 cur
 new
 tmp
 mail-sent
 outbox
 other

This implies to me
1. it finds the Maildir directory
2. it apparently does not have access to the directories like INBOX so it makes its own in the root? or is this a side effect I'm misunderstanding?

The resulting IMAP session shows an empty INBOX only (this must be the cur new tmp it added) The real INBOX is not accessible but still intact.

In a session this morning I could access all the folders just not the real INBOX. INBOX was as is here empty with cur new tmp in the root of the Maildir folder. 
This behavior makes no sense. I'm using the hierarchical structure as pointed to in.
http://wiki1.dovecot.org/MailLocation/Maildir

It appears my grief surrounds dovecot's detection of mailbox. This is kind of what I said days ago. Setting up requires you to know expected states. Something in my environmment I haven't been able to identify (yet) is influencing recognising that hierarchical maildir structure.

-Walt