Barry,
default_mail_env = mbox:%h/mail/:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
This is what I used to get Mail.app to work with dovecot. Just
modify the paths to match your system. Keep your mail prefix empty
in the Account settings.
James
On Dec 26, 2006, at 1:09 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
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I'm trying to convert a courier-imap installation over to using
Dovecot, but I'm having some problems with Mail.app on OS X. FTR,
we use both Mail.app and Thunderbird. Note that in the Mail.app
preferences, I have a blank IMAP Path Prefix. I'm using Dovecot
1.0_rc15 on Gentoo, and Mail.app from OS X 10.4.8, Thunderbird
1.5.0.9.With the old courier setup, in Mail.app I would see a top level
Inbox folder, with an inbox icon'd folder underneath that
representing the IMAP account. That IMAP account subfolder would
be the inbox of that account. Under that, I'd see all the
subfolders for that account. Something like:Inbox Account1 Folder1 Folder2 ... Account2 FolderA Outbox Drafts Sent Junk SmartFolder1 SmartFolder2
Note that a straight copy from the courier Maildir leaves me with
directories like ~/Maildir/.Folder1 and ~/Maildir/.Folder2 -- IOW,
they do not have .INBOX. prefix. I tried adding a "namespace
private" section, with separator, prefix, and inbox values as
specified in the docs.This gives me the same layout in the Mail.app u/i as with Courier,
but there's a big problem: none of the folders under Account1 have
any contents. The folders are there, and in the right location,
but they have zero messages (even though they certainly have
messages in the filesystem). Nothing in the Dovecot log file
indicates any problem. But if I hover over say Folder1 in the
Mail.app u/i, I see a popup message like:Mail was unable to open this mailbox on the server"imap.example.com". The server error encountered was: Unknown namespace
Moving over to Thunderbird though, I see exactly what I want to
see. Top level expandable is the account, with Inbox under that,
which expands to all my folders. Of course Thunderbird supports
subscriptions, which Mail.app does not, so I only see the folders
I've subscribed to. Clearly, there's some weird interaction
between Mail.app and Dovecot.Next, I tried removing the 'prefix' value from the "namespace
private" section, and restarted Dovecot. Now the Mail.app u/i is
different, but all the folders have their contents back! The u/i
now shows:Inbox Account1 Account2 FolderA Outbox Drafts Sent Junk SmartFolder1 SmartFolder2 Account1 Folder1 Folder2
IOW, all of account1's folders live under a separate expandable
section below the top level Inbox expandable (that section has a
little world icon instead of the little inbox icon). Account1's
inbox lives in a different section from its folders, but it has no
subfolders.Looking back at Thunderbird, I notice that all the subscribed
folders are now at the same level as the Inbox, just under the
account name. I.e.Account1 Inbox Trash Folder1 Folder2 ...
I suppose I can live with the Mail.app behavior sans the prefix
setting in the namespace section, but it's not ideal. I'd really
like to know why Mail.app has a problem with this! Why are the
folders there but the contents empty? Is there any way to increase
the logging that Dovecot does to understand what the Mail.app
client is sending and why Dovecot is sending back that error?Any help would be greatly appreciated!
- -Barry
P.S. I wasn't able to use courier2dovecot.sh from the wiki (I think
others had problems with running it on Linux as well, probably due
to the different rename(1) syntax). The courier2dovecot.py file
was no longer available, so I wrote my own. I can make that
available to folks if there's any interest. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (Darwin)iQCVAwUBRZC8sXEjvBPtnXfVAQK90gQAjFhEH+vIPh7pnY4MuOTU8ChWfJ57ppIQ g0HvHidiD5nOfd8pfpsfacdD1nC40cRlpnJkR6vcahvqQsLzSUzUMwVlUqP2IDSE jGvZGpGSBpjTHV/ktWbyJhPo9+ehVxiq+qEfbDgfw9iqBtulOXe4M25iUKO8tsuA n2bCHHoUXuk= =hxad -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----