are you using proper linux uid and gid on files?
-----Original Message----- From: Markus Schönhaber via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> Sent: Monday, 31 August 2026 20:12 To: dovecot@dovecot.org Subject: Re: Dovecot 2.4: shared mailboxes not working - maybe related to mail_path
21.08.26, 10:12 +0200, Markus Schönhaber via dovecot:
In case someone stumbles over this as I did:
The documentation here https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.5/core/config/shared_mailboxes.html#user- shared-mailboxes says:
The sharing user can be accessed with %{owner_user}, %{owner_username} and %{owner_domain} variables. There is even an example: mail_path = /var/mail/%{owner_domain}/%{owner_username}/Maildir
This is, AFAICT, simply wrong WRT %{owner_username} and %{owner_domain}.
One can indeed use %{owner_user} and %{owner_home}, though. That way, I could solve my problem by setting
namespace shared { type = shared list = children subscriptions = no prefix = shared/$domain/$username/ mail_home = %{owner_home} mail_path = /path2mail/%{owner_user | domain}/%{owner_user | username} }
-- Regards mks
20.08.26, 22:35 +0200, Klaus Tachtler via dovecot:
This ist the way I configured "shares" and it's still working: (German language)
https://dokuwiki.tachtler.net/doku.php?id=tachtler:dovecot_archlinux_- _shares
Thanks for your answer, but I don't think that it helps in my situation.
AFAICT, you describe a setup where mail_path is a subdirectory of mail_home with a fixed name ("Maildir", same for all users). In that case, you can get the owner's mail_path by appending "Maildir" to %{owner_home}. That won't work for me, where mail_home and mail_path point to different paths (not one being subpath of the other).
What I fail to understand is why I can use %{owner_username} and %{owner_domain} in mail_home but not in mail_path, i. e.
namespace shared { type = shared
This works fine
mail_home = /var/spool/vmail/home/%{owner_domain}/%{owner_username}
while this generates an "Unknown variable" error
mail_path = /var/spool/vmail/mail/%{owner_domain}/%{owner_username} }
And what should I do instead to make sure that, in the shared namespace, mail_path points to the sharing user's path and not to the one of the "client" who wants to access it?
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