Thanks Bill,
I thought I'd gotten that. I guess, not enough sleep.
So now, when attempting to connect, I'm getting this in the log (and hurray, I'm now getting far enough to at least have something in the log):
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:41 Error: IMAP(benfell): Namespace 'folders/'
mail storage creation failed with mail location: /home/benfell/imap-folders
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:41 Error: child 7412 (imap) returned error 89
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:50 Info: auth(default): new auth connection:
pid=7413
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): client in: AUTH
1 PLAIN service=IMAP secured lip=216.240.40.179
rip=134.154.208.37 resp=AGJlbmZlbGwAVjNvNXk3ZTl1M3I4
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default):
pam(benfell,134.154.208.37): lookup service=dovecot
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): client out: OK
1 user=benfell
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): master in: REQUEST
2 7408 1
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default):
passwd(benfell,134.154.208.37): lookup
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): master out: USER
2 benfell system_user=benfell uid=1000 gid=1000
home=/home/benfell
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Error: IMAP(benfell): Ambiguous mail
location setting, don't know what to do with it:
/home/benfell/imap-folders (try prefixing it with mbox: or maildir:)
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Error: IMAP(benfell): Namespace 'folders/'
mail storage creation failed with mail location: /home/benfell/imap-folders
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: imap-login: Login: user=<benfell>,
method=PLAIN, rip=134.154.208.37, lip=216.240.40.179, TLS
dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Error: child 7415 (imap) returned error 89
What I really want to do here is to use an already existing, and rather elaborate, set of folders I've been using with mutt for quite a number of years.
But my life has gotten more complicated and I need to be able to access this email along with a number of others, remotely. Evolution seems adequate to the task, as it can deal (quite nicely, it seems) with a (groan) Microsoft Exchange server used at my university.
When I first got a message like the above, I interpreted it as meaning that dovecot wants to create its own directory structure.
So I told the configuration to use a nonexistent directory. As near as I can tell in my sleep-deprived condition, that made no difference.
So here's the current configuration:
starshine# dovecot -n # 1.0.10: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf log_path: /var/log/dovecot.log log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login mail_privileged_group: mail mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir:INBOX=~/failed-to-sort-Maildir:INDEX=%h/imap-folders namespace: type: private separator: / prefix: folders/ location: ~/imap-folders inbox: yes auth default: verbose: yes debug: yes debug_passwords: yes passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd starshine#
Now, what? Thanks!