My sub-folder with Outlook work-around to date

Sat Oct 7 03:22:28 EEST 2017

Hi All,

Thanks to MJ for the suggestion as my only hope, and I have tested this 
with Outlook 2016 and Thunderbird today - seamless creation of folders.

Now the mammoth task of converting customers with masses of mbox folders 
to MailDir format using the on-line perl script: mb2md-3.20.pl

Works nicely and will be what gets us out of trouble. My only sadness is 
that Outlook then has to be 're-subscribed' to the folders again.... 
which makes sense or maybe I didn't give it long enough - its IMAP 
folder syncs are extremely slow compared to Thunderbird which I also 
tested in parallel. Thunderbird didn't need any re-sync, it just found 
the new subscription setup and was ready to go. But in all fairness, 
Outlook is still really only an Exchange compatible product for the most 
part.

Would be great to run both mbox and MailDir at the same time so we can 
do the slow user-by-user process rather than having them all down at 
some point completely - might look at running Dovecot on a different 
port maybe with a different ".conf" but thinking this may not work 
anyway or cause issues.... back to my server tests to see :-)

I use additional ports to 143 for external IMAP restrictions anyway so 
might be able to do this method somehow.

Anyway, for those interested in where I got to in my testing so far...

1. Download perl script "mb2md-3.20.pl" from:

http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md

2. Changed Dovecot /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf mbox entry to MailDir:

#mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

3. Restarted Dovecot

4. su as user and in their home (/u/home/user on my setup):

/u/packages/mb2md-3.20.pl -m

then:

mv mail mail_old

then:

/u/packages/mb2md-3.20.pl -s mail_old -R

then:

Login with Outlook and subscribe to IMAP folders again.

Not a big fan of gazillions of little eml based text mail files in 
directories but hey, if it fixes our issues, maybe I need to stop 
wambulancing about it all and do as I am told :-)

Hope this helps - will keep this e-mail updated on findings if anything 
else comes to light.

On 07/10/17 00:46, David.M.Clark wrote:
> Thanks for the reply MJ.
> 
> Good to hear it works in MailDir format - might need to look at this.
> 
> To date I have only had this issue with Outlook and for me personally on 
> Fedora with Thunderbird, I tend to keep a heap of e-mail folders without 
> sub-foldering and have my own little Linux 'utopia' of annually 
> archiving folders etc using the Linux scripting environment, so I never 
> have these issues..... but is a client requirement so will see what I 
> can do from here - they were a bit excited about a web interface to do 
> the "/" bit to get a "master/sub-folder" working so.... I still may 
> implement this if MailDir is too much of a hassle.
> 
> Thanks again for your reply.
> 
> On 06/10/17 16:42, mj wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> What we do, on the dovecot side, is:
>>
>> mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs:DIRNAME=mAildir
>>
>> See: https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailLocation/Maildir
>>
>> This has been working out very nicely for many years.
>>
>> I'm not sure though that there is a way to 'move' to that config 
>> without having to basically migrate all your mailboxes.
>>
>> MJ
>>
>> On 10/06/2017 04:08 AM, David.M.Clark wrote:
>>> Hi All, please be kind, this is my first e-mail to the list :-)
>>>
>>> I actively support CentOS based e-mail servers running Dovecot, 
>>> Sendmail, Spammassassin and 3 x SOGo based setups.
>>>
>>> Dovecot is my goto IMAP server and have used it and modifications to 
>>> it to net excellent results for years.
>>>
>>> Then we have people who insist on only using Outlook (and in some 
>>> instances the MS Live Messenger thingy).
>>>
>>> Some shenanigans in recent years have arose with using sub-folders in 
>>> the Outlook clients (2013 and 2016).
>>>
>>> Traditionally, placing a "/" after the name of a newly desired e-mail 
>>> folder has netted the result of something like:
>>>
>>> "Rentals/"
>>>
>>> creating:
>>>
>>> /u/home/someuser/mail/Rentals/
>>>
>>> Under which users then create actual e-mail folders under the 
>>> "Rentals" Linux directory as such.
>>>
>>> With Outlook 2013 and 2016 this seems to have stopped working and so 
>>> I implemented a work-around where the user creates a normal folder, 
>>> example "Rentals++", and I have written a cron script that trawls the 
>>> $HOMEs each minute and if it finds a folder with a "++" at the end, 
>>> it creates the folder as a directory, so:
>>>
>>> /u/home/someuser/mail/Rentals++
>>>
>>> becomes:
>>>
>>> /u/home/someuser/mail/Rentals/
>>>
>>> and adds this new subscription to their .subscription folder. It also 
>>> sends an e-mail to the user advising that the new folder is created 
>>> and they can proceed to use the "Rentals" folder for adding 
>>> sub-folders (as in real text based mail folders).
>>>
>>> The script was a quick work-around one weekend in a mad flurry to get 
>>> things working and to date works but is not 'user-proof'. So I am now 
>>> looking at developing an internal web interface to do the same thing 
>>> and hoping with more controls, has no or far less margin for user 
>>> error. Long times of Outlook folder refreshes don't help and users 
>>> sometimes end up with issues that require my Linux command line help.
>>>
>>> I have been trawling e-mail forums for some time now and have not 
>>> seen any other work-arounds (or perhaps I am living under a rock) but 
>>> before I embark on this web interface adventure, I just wanted to 
>>> make sure I had not missed some fundamental 'bit' that I should be 
>>> observing.
>>>
>>> All servers are either CentOS 6.9 (or slightly less) and CentOS 7 
>>> with the latest updates and for things like Thunderbird and Roundcube 
>>> and SOGo, work well. I need to experiment with the whole "/" for 
>>> these but I am currently driven by the enforced Outlook chains.
>>>
>>> Any input from you guys on whether this is my best approach or 'hey 
>>> mate, just do this', would be much appreciated.
>>>
>>> I am happy to share my travels script/web-wise if this is the only 
>>> option to date.
>>>
> 

-- 

As always, I remain at your service.

Kindest Regards,
David.M.Clark (Director - Senior Linux/UNIX Consultant)
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