[Dovecot] Virtual Folders

[Timo Sirainen]

On Fri, 2012-02-24 at 08:27 -0600, jacob at alltechservices-ia.com wrote:

> Essentially, a gmail clone, but one that
> I can make work on cPanel hosts with roundcube and squirrel mail, etc.
> 
> By default, cpanel creates user mail dir structure of (maildir++)
> inbox, drafts, sent, junk, and trash (with no dovecot specific files
> until first login) 
> 
> I would like to replace all those folders with
> virtual representations with more capabilities. I would like to achieve
> the conversation view that gmail has pulled off so well. 

It's kind of possible to do that, but Dovecot has some problems with
updating the view I think. Or maybe it was only when email was deleted
that it didn't properly update the view.

> namespace:
>  type: private
>  prefix: INBOX.
>  inbox: yes
>  list:
> yes
>  subscriptions: yes

This is your real mail's namespace.

> box with Debian running the same version of dovecot (1.2.x) and on that
> system I run into problems every time I make a virtual folder a root
> folder. I assume it is trying to look up a normal folder instead of the
> virtual ones and I am confusing it. 

namespace {
  prefix =
  separator = /
  location = virtual:/etc/dovecot/virtual:INDEX=~/Maildir/virtual
  inbox = yes
}

namespace {
  prefix = RealMails/
  separator = /
  list = no
  hidden = yes
}

This has the problem that user now can't create any mailboxes other than
what you have created globally..

There's really no automatic way to do this.