[Dovecot] Shared namespace, separator, username and dots.

[Timo Sirainen]

On 1.11.2013, at 18.26, Marcio Merlone <marcio.merlone at a1.ind.br> wrote:

> I run a legacy mailserver that i had replaced courier-imap for dovecot 1.2. Everything is fine except for shared namespace. Maildir structure has been created using dot '.' as folder separator. It happens that all our users are created as name.surname as default. So when I want to select a shared folder, MUA end up with the following IMAP command:
> 
> select shared.jhon.doe.folder.subfolder
> 
> Obviously I took ages to figure why it won't work since it takes 'doe' as a folder and not a username part. When sharing a folder from 'sales' user, for example, it works fine.  What do you suggest to make shared folders work for all without rebuilding hundreds of maildirs to change folder separator from '.' to '/‘?

The only other solution would be to translate the username to not contain dots, so for example the mailbox name would become shared.john_doe.folder.subfolder. But this can’t currently be done only for shared mailboxes, you’d have to do it globally with e.g.:

auth_username_translate = ._

This would affect %u and %n in your settings also, so some paths would change.