On Thursday, August 14, 2008 3:46 PM -0400 Mike Hobbs mhobbs@mtl.mit.edu wrote:
I'd like to use maildir with all my new users, but I'd like to be able to continue using mbox for my old users and slowly convert them as I get time.
I did this a week ago for about a dozen users and the system seems more responsive.
Timo covered the Dovecot side. You didn't say what delivery agent you're using. I use procmail and put this .procmailrc in the home directories of the converted users:
# deliver to Maildir MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/
The file should be owned by the user. (I forgot to chown the file for one user and mail was delivered to the old /var/spool/mail/user mbox file. After I figured it out, I did another conversion with convert-tool to a temporary Maildir-new and moved the converted inbox into a new folder under his previously-converted ~/Maildir.)
If a user is using procmail for filtering, he'll need to change the destination folder lines in his filters. This list could be filtered with a rule like this:
:0 :
- ^Sender:.*dovecot $HOME/Maildir/.Lists.Mail.Dovecot/
Note the trailing slash on delivery lines to indicate that the destination is in Maildir format.
To avoid reconfiguring the folder separator on clients, you can add this namespace directive to dovecot.conf:
namespace private { separator = / inbox = yes }