[Dovecot] basic understanding of imap in dovecot
I have always used a pop3 daemon, and switching to dovecot has been my introduction to imap. Imap is foreign to me.
I am wondering if I am a little off-track here, and would like some clarification.
My MTA (exim) delivers email to: /mail/user dovecot, sucks that mail from /mail/user TO /home/user/mail/<filenamesoffolders> dovecot IMAP further uses /home/user/mail/.imap/folders/{.index / .index.cache / .index.log}
the mail folder which exim uses doesn't seem to get emptied by dovecot when it sucks the email into /home/user/mail/<filenamesoffolders> when using IMAP. If POP3 is used via dovecot, then it appears that the interaction is directly to the original exim folder and that it does indeed empty (or at least it has the "FOLDER INTERNAL DATA" entry).
I suppose my question is, is there a way to have dovecot empty/parse the original exim mailbox so that the customer email isn't sitting in two spots, taking up double the space. This would be in the IMAP environment only, as POP3 seems to be fine.
Any online references available to help a newbee understand IMAP?
Thanks!
On Wed, 2009-12-23 at 10:44 -0800, dovecot@paz.bz wrote:
No, it doesn't suck any email (by default anyway).
Dovecot should be using the mailbox directly without copying it.
So you've misunderstood something, but without more information I can't really guess what it is.
Timo Sirainen wrote:
You are sure a patient person !!
I tested my setup, and confirmed that dovecot isn't doing the things which I suspected it was doing.
What is 'causing' this odd behavior is my use of Thunderbird MUA. I created a new 'imap' account on Thunderbird, and started copying the email from the old POP account into my Thunderbird 'IMAP' account. It appears that it is Thunderbird which is uploading the email BACK to the mail server as I copy it from the POP to the IMAP account within it.
Not sure if this is the 'correct' behavior for an MUA -- uploading back to the server, but that IS why the home/user/mail directory is getting populated... from Thunderbird uploads.
Can anyone point me at a tutorial on the 'abilities' of IMAP?
Jim
participants (3)
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dovecot@paz.bz
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Jim Pazarena
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Timo Sirainen