[Dovecot] best practice to have sent mail folder on dovecot imap server

Reindl Harald h.reindl at thelounge.net
Sun Sep 8 19:15:57 EEST 2013


Am 08.09.2013 18:04, schrieb Thomas Koch:
> I've already asked this here:
> http://serverfault.com/questions/533940/best-practice-to-have-sent-mail-
> folder-on-dovecot-imap-server
> 
> when I add a mail account to KMail (or most other MUA I suppose) the sent mail 
> folder is on the local machine and I don't have my sent mails on other 
> machines.
> 
> I'd like to have a sent mail folder in IMAP and I thought that there would 
> already exist a standard or best practice how to set this up so that the mail 
> is only transfered once to the MTA and from the MTA to the IMAP server
> 
> I even thought to remember an RFC related to this problem?
> It isn't that simple, is it? I'm using Exim

these days any kown mail client in case of IMAP copies the message after successful
sending via APPEND to the sent folder on the IMAP server - if kmail as default stores
it only in a local folder file a bug against kmail

hence you can even configure in which IMAP folder sent messages should be stored which
is one of the biggest problem because every random client handles this different instead
look if there is a "Sent" folder use it and display the locale name unindependet of
the servers name

mix different clients and in case of Apple mail.app and iPhones with different patchlevels
and you will see a ton of different named sent-folder until you configure any device to use
the same and remove the orphans

the XLIST capability promises to solve this problem but it will take years until any relevant
client is supporting this and only god knows how to act in the situtation where you still have
5 different sent-folders - so in the real world expect the problem exists the next 5 years

http://www.limilabs.com/blog/imap-list-xlist-and-lsub
_______________________________________________

transfer it only once to the MTA and from there to the sent-folder is more
or less impossible - most mail systems deliver messages via LMTP to dovecot
or whatever MDA and in that case have no predictable way to put it in the
sent folder serverside, at least not if you keep in mind that people
access their mail with different clients at the same time in days
of smartphones, tablets and whatever clients acess the same account
at the same time


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