On Sat, 2012-06-16 at 22:16 +0200, Patrick Ben Koetter wrote:
- Jonathan Ryshpan jonrysh@pacbell.net:
I need to import the mail database generated by the evolution mail reader into dovecot. Evolution stores its mail in maildir format (fully standards compatible, I think); I would be using the maildir format in dovecot. Is there anything in the wiki, etc. explaining exactly how to do this?
Why do this? Evolution is hopelessly broken, and is not likely to be fixed in the forseeable future, and I would like to keep my mails in maildir form. Reviews of kmail are very bad, and thunderbird uses the mbox format for storage.
If it is native maildir you can configure that/your account to use maildir and simply copy your mailbox over to Dovecot. When Dovecot accesses the mailbox it will create the necessary index files and you are ready to use it.
I have now set up dovecot on my system, and should now be in business, but when Thunderbird connects to Dovecot it doesn't see any folders. Here is the situation. Please excuse the length of this message; I have tried to include all useful information.
My system is Fedora-17 Linux with all updates running on x86_64 hardware. Dovecot is installed and running with this configuration:
$ dovecot -n
# 2.1.7: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 3.4.3-1.fc17.x86_64 x86_64 Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle)
mail_location = mbox:~/Dovecot:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
mail_privileged_group = mail
managesieve_notify_capability = mailto
managesieve_sieve_capability = fileinto reject envelope encoded-character vacation subaddress comparator-i;ascii-numeric relational regex imap4flags copy include variables body enotify environment mailbox date ihave
mbox_write_locks = fcntl
namespace inbox {
inbox = yes
location =
mailbox Drafts {
special_use = \Drafts
}
mailbox Junk {
special_use = \Junk
}
mailbox Sent {
special_use = \Sent
}
mailbox "Sent Messages" {
special_use = \Sent
}
mailbox Trash {
special_use = \Trash
}
prefix =
}
passdb {
driver = pam
}
plugin {
sieve = ~/.dovecot.sieve
sieve_dir = ~/sieve
}
ssl = required
ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem
ssl_key = </etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem
userdb {
driver = passwd
}The folder ~/Dovecot contains a very large number of files and folers, which were all copied from the mail database of evolution, and consist of all the actual mail archived by evolution, but not its index files.
$ ls -lA Dovecot
total 4976
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .Drafts
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .Outbox
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .Sent
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .Tamburas
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .Templates
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .adax
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .ads
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .alissa
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .ally-bank
...
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .vicente
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .walgreens
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .wells
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .westwind
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Dec 31 10:36 .wview
drwx------. 5 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 .yum
-rw-------. 1 jonrysh jonrysh 0 Jun 22 18:10 Trash
drwx------. 2 jonrysh jonrysh 4530176 Jun 22 13:31 cur
drwx------. 2 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jul 6 2011 new
drwx------. 2 jonrysh jonrysh 4096 Jun 22 13:31 tmpThunderbird reports that is can connect with the Dovecot imap server, but doesn't show any of these folders. It shows only the Folders Inbox and Trash. Clicking on Inbox causes the Thunderbird error message:
The current operation on 'Inbox' did not succeed. The mail
server for account jonrysh@localhost responded: [SERVERBUG]
Internal error occurred. Refer to server log f…and /var/log/maillog shows the corresponding error:
Jun 22 18:23:10 amito dovecot: imap(jonrysh): Error: chown(/home/jonrysh/Dovecot/.imap/INBOX, group=12(mail)) failed: Operation not permitted (egid=1000(jonrysh), group based on /var/spool/mail/jonrysh - see http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Errors/ChgrpNoPerm)As a complete Dovecot/IMAP newbie, I am completely confused. Any advice will be much appreciated.
jon