I'm a total newbie regarding imap servers. I'm trying to set up a Offlineimap/dovecot/Gnus system and Gnus complains that it cannot access the maildir... Here is my setup, put together by copying stuff from around the web without any prior knowledge of these tools...
Offlineimap is setup to use the $HOME/Maildir-free/, using
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- preauthtunnel = /usr/lib/dovecot/imap -o mail_location=maildir:$HOME/Maildir-free --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
in the local maildir part of ~/.offlineimaprc.
The Maildir-free maildir has been correctly (I think) populated with a single "General" folder.
/home/wilk/Maildir-free: total used in directory 52 available 5502852 drwxrwxr-x 6 wilk wilk 4096 oct. 23 11:10 . drwx------ 240 wilk wilk 20480 oct. 23 15:06 .. drwxrwxr-x 2 wilk wilk 4096 oct. 23 11:09 cur -rw-rw-r-- 1 wilk wilk 348 oct. 23 11:10 dovecot.index.log -rw-rw-r-- 1 wilk wilk 51 oct. 23 11:10 dovecot-uidlist -rw-rw-r-- 1 wilk wilk 8 oct. 23 11:09 dovecot-uidvalidity -r--r--r-- 1 wilk wilk 0 oct. 23 11:09 dovecot-uidvalidity.5629f967 drwx------ 6 wilk wilk 4096 oct. 23 11:16 General -rw-rw-r-- 1 wilk wilk 0 oct. 23 11:09 maildirfolder drwxrwxr-x 2 wilk wilk 4096 oct. 23 11:09 new drwxrwxr-x 2 wilk wilk 4096 oct. 23 11:09 tmp
dovecot is not setup to start as a server (no script in /etc/rc*.d/) and I didn't configure anything in any /etc/dovecot/ file (maybe I should have ?)
Gnus is supposed to access the maildir as an IMAP server through dovecot: I have:
(nnimap "FreeOffline" (nnimap-stream shell) (nnimap-shell-program "/usr/lib/dovecot/imap -o mail_location=maildir:$HOME/Maildir-free")
in gnus-secondary-select-methods
I try to access this maildir as follows
/usr/lib/dovecot/imap -o mail_location=maildir:/home/wilk/Maildir-free/
- PREAUTH [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE IDLE SORT SORT=DISPLAY THREAD=REFERENCES THREAD=REFS THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT MULTIAPPEND URL-PARTIAL CATENATE UNSELECT CHILDREN NAMESPACE UIDPLUS LIST-EXTENDED I18NLEVEL=1 CONDSTORE QRESYNC ESEARCH ESORT SEARCHRES WITHIN CONTEXT=SEARCH LIST-STATUS SPECIAL-USE BINARY MOVE] Logged in as wilk
- LIST "" *
- LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." INBOX
- OK List completed.
As you can see, the "General" folder doesn't appear, and there is a mention of "INBOX" even though there is no folder under this name (but I guess that's a default for any IMAP system). Accordingly, Gnus only displays a INBOX folder when browsing the FreeOffline IMAP server, and complains that it contains no message.
What's the correct way to setup dovecot? Thanks for your help.
Julien.