Hello,
I'm willing to swear that with the 0.99.10.4 Debian package in my rather extensive tests with mailbox format dovecot created not only any missing parental directories but also the INBOX file, but the later I can't prove/test now as I upgraded all respective boxes.
However 0.99.10.5 will still create (if needed and possible) missing directories for mbox storage, just not an empty INBOX.
But with maildir, it will not even do that, from a test with pop3 and imap login attempts to a freshly created account that had not received any mails yet:
Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3-login: Login: test [203.216.5.92] Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3: I/O leak: 0x8050ce0 (0) Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3: I/O leak: 0x8084aa0 (1) Jun 10 12:58:49 mb01 imap-login: Login: ttest [203.216.5.92] Jun 10 12:58:50 mb01 last message repeated 3 times Jun 10 12:58:50 mb01 dovecot: child 9193 (imap) killed with signal 11
It died not very graceful in either case, esp. the later.
Unless there are very RFC'ish and imperative reasons, I'd suggest that dovecot creates all missing bits if possible no matter what the storage method or pretends to have encountered an empty mbox file or maildir cur/new respectively.
The rationale should be obvious, no frantic user calls about "My mail is not working" when the answer is "Duh, that's because you never ever received one yet". ;)
Regards,
Christian Balzer
Christian Balzer Network/Systems Engineer NOC chibi@gol.com Global OnLine Japan/Fusion Network Services http://www.gol.com/