[Dovecot] INBOX protected foldername?

Hajo Locke hajo.locke at gmx.de
Tue Aug 6 10:52:42 EEST 2013


Hello,


>> [...]
>> In higher dovecot versions INBOX seems to be a kind of protected 
>> foldername. dovecot is not offering this folder in folderlist. If i 
>> rename it, the folder is available again.
>> [...]
>> Is there an explaination for this behaviour?

> The case-insensitive mailbox name INBOX is a special name reserved to
> mean "the primary mailbox for this user on this server".  The
> interpretation of all other names is implementation-dependent.

Its not about the INBOX itself in /var/mail, there are some clients like 
groupoffice which do their own foldermanagment and create a Folder INBOX on 
top-level in mailspace

Hiding user created folders with Name INBOX seems to be based on standard 
namespace config in 2.1.x
In dovecot 2.1.7 we have in global:

mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
namespace inbox {
  inbox = yes
}

This seems to be the default and leads to the problem that Folders with Name 
INBOX are hidden.
Like suggested in  http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces (Examples Mixed mbox 
and Maildir) i changed the standard namespace to:


namespace inbox {
  separator = /
  prefix = "#mbox/"
  location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
  inbox = yes
  hidden = yes
  list = no
}
namespace mbox {
  separator = /
  prefix =
  location = mbox:~/mail
}

Because we are using mbox, i have to set up the 2nd namespace again with 
"location = mbox:~/mail".
This works and Folders with Name INBOX are shown again. This namespace 
configuration looks a bit strange to me, but works. Is this a recommend way 
to do this? I dont want to get surprised by other behaviour.

Thanks,
Hajo



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