My sub-folder with Outlook work-around to date

[Philon]

Hi David,

I somehow remember that there is a way to get the mail_location from per-user-settings. I had this once when migrating from maildir to mdbox.

You might want to use Google and the mailing list archives for the details but in summary it went like this:

- set Dovecot to grab the mail_location from user-settings (I think we used MySQL db field - or check docs for auto:)
- have login script which converts maildir from setup A to B and update the user setting
- kick the user once again to apply the setting (I’m not sure about this)

This then automates the conversion process to happen on next user login.

Be warned though that today with all the idle phones, probably many users will re-login after you restart the server. Perhaps the scripting could handle a timer which randomizes this a little.


Philon


> Am 07.10.2017 um 02:22 schrieb David.M.Clark <david at davrom.com>:
> 
> 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.