[Dovecot] Namespace, prefix questions

[Steve Campbell]

We've got some users who are using Outlook Express version 6. The client 
allows me to specify the root folder, but not a prefix or namespace. I'm 
still struggling with some users on our new server that have crazy imap 
folder layouts, so I've got a few questions.

When I specify the root folder, does that bypass any namespace/prefix 
definitions on the imap server?

On some clients, like Thunderbird, I have the option of specifying 
namespace OR prefix. How do these differ? I thought that the prefix was 
the "name" of the namespace.

It appears that I have to delete and re-create the account on these OE 6 
clients to make the list of folders show properly. Does that sound right?

This all came about because one of these OE 6 users was not able to use 
their imap folders (server errors). Turns out it was one of the users 
that had their folders directly under ~. So I moved them to ~/mail, 
created a .subscriptions file from their .mailboxlist file and tried 
everything in the world to get the folders to list properly. Only after 
specifying the root folder as ~/mail after recreating the account and 
restarting OE did it show properly and the folders remained listed. My 
default config has this setup as the "mail_location" parm, but blanks as 
the root folder don't seem to work in this situation. I'm also wondering 
where I specify the "list", "hidden" and other parms that are usually 
set in namespace blocks.

dovecot -n
# 2.0.9: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.32-220.4.1.el6.x86_64 x86_64 CentOS release 6.2 (Final)
disable_plaintext_auth = no
listen = *
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
mbox_write_locks = fcntl
namespace {
   hidden = yes
   inbox = yes
   list = yes
   location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
   prefix =
   separator = /
   type = private
}
namespace {
   hidden = yes
   list = no
   location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
   prefix = "#mbox/"
   separator = /
   type = private
}
namespace {
   hidden = yes
   list = no
   location =
   prefix = mail/
   separator = /
   type = private
}
namespace {
   hidden = yes
   list = yes
   location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
   prefix = ~/mail/
   separator = /
   type = private
}
namespace {
   hidden = yes
   list = no
   location =
   prefix = ~%u/mail/
   separator = /
   type = private
}
passdb {
   driver = pam
}
protocols = pop3 imap
ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem
ssl_key = </etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem
userdb {
   driver = passwd
}
protocol pop3 {
   pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv
}


Thanks

steve campbell



Thanks

steve campbell