John Doe wrote:
Hi,
I am new to dovecot and I am a bit confused with how namespaces/prefixes/separators are handled by the clients and dovecot... I tried to understand the desciption from the conf file but without success.
With each conf I create the following path /f1/f2 on the client (thunderbird) and get the following on the dovecot server:
PREFIX= and separator=/ => .INBOX.f1.f2 + .INBOXTrash PREFIX=INBOX/ and separator=/ => .f1.f2 and no Trash
PREFIX=INBOX. and separator=. => .f1.f2 and no Trash
Could someone point me to some IMAP for dummy web page...? ;D Or, what is the best conf able to handle most clients?
Thx, JD
I research a similar issue for a user and found that the / character is not allowed (or at least didn't used to be) in folder names. Even if you can get it to work on the server, a lot of clients will break. In fact various clients seem to be sensitive to what characters you use outside of a limited range.
The SEPARATOR should just refer to the storage structure and the PREFIX should refer to the hierarchy. So if you use "/" as your SEPARATOR, then your storage structure will be user-directory/folder/sub-folder and if you use "." as your storage structure (the default), then your storage structure will be user-directory/.folder.sub-folder . A PREFIX of INBOX. should cause all of the folders & sub-folders to appear under the inbox; a PREFIX of "." should cause all of the folders to appear at the top level; and a PREFIX of Mail. will should all of the folders to appear under Mail with the exception of the INBOX.
The reason that I use the word should because not all clients care what you declare the namespace to be. They "know", or think they know, better. Webmail is one of these clients as you declare your own prefix in the configuration file.
Once you decide on what structure you want, make sure that your configuration will make that structure the default as you can run with multiple namespace in the same storage locations (if you are a masochist). The sample configuration and wiki is pretty good on this part but let me know if you want help. I was a masochist for a while in my development environment until I became smarter.
The RFC isn't a great read so you might want to look at the following discussions about folder characters:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281211 http://lists.apple.com/archives/macos-x-server/2005/dec/msg00445.html http://osdir.com/ml/mail.squirrelmail.internationalization/2005-10/msg00041
The ideal hierarchy seems client dependent for the clients that care.
My preference is to the INBOX. prefix because that's what my ISP and (yuck) Exchange uses. So we can the same look and feel to give our users the warm fuzzy. I'm also lazy and our support staff want the minimum of pain. Applemail seems happy with this setup, unless you have more than one account in which case it gets grumpy no matter what. Thunderbird, pine, and mutt all seem good but they are pretty flexible. I make other people test Microsoft.
We are currently using Mail. in production for legacy reasons but that will sort of change someday (we give both depending on server address).
I think that Timo likes the (default) top level structure but that is very scary in my environment.
I wish I had a better answer but at the end of the day your configuration depends on your client base and what works best for your server.
Hope this helps - sorry about the length.
---Jack
-- Jack Stewart jstewart@caltech.edu http://www.imss.caltech.edu