Re: [Dovecot] Having trouble getting Dovecot to read a ~/Maildir configuration
Murray Collingwood put forth on 4/20/2011 8:29 PM:
Hi Stan
I only have the one account on this server, everything else is relayed elsewhere.
If this is an SMTP relay server, I'm surprised you bothered to install an IMAP server at all. It would have been easier to simply alias postmaster@ to another account on another machine where you do store mailboxes. I.e. simply 'forward' all postmaster mail to you main account and use Sieve to sort all postmaster mail into a folder. This is exactly what I do. It's what a lot of people do, especially those handling many domains, and thus having lots of postmaster addresses.
A question about where the mail is actually supposed to be delivered to... initially I configured Exim4 to delivery the email to ~/Maildir and I noticed as you saw in the list directories like ~/Maildir/new and ~/Maildir/cur, however once I configured Evolution to login to Dovecot I noticed the directories ~/Maildir/INBOX/new and ~Maildir/INBOX/cur were created. Should therefore Exim4 be configured to ~/Maildir/INBOX instead of just ~/Maildir ?
Configuration of maildir can be a little confusing the first time around. Given your situation/server, I'm really surprised you didn't use mbox instead. It fits this scenario much better than maildir.
Voila! I just tested this change with Exim4, restarted everything and Evolution now shows me messages. The LAYOUT=fs was correct, and so it was more a matter of getting Exim4 to deliver to ~/Maildir/INBOX .... a little confusing but this was my first time with Exim4 (I've been a sendmail user for a number of years).
Setting up Dovecot LDA with EXIM: http://wiki1.dovecot.org/LDA/Exim
You're probably using procmail or maildrop currently. I don't use either of these, so I'm unfamiliar with their setup WRT maildir. Should be pretty straightforward though.
RoundCube still isn't working but I'm not going to worry about that - Evolution will be cool.
Need more details to help with RC. As long as you can establish an IMAP connection to Dovecot, RC is pretty smart about figuring out where everything is even if you don't explicitly tell it.
Thanks for your help - simply confirming one setting helps.
Heh, I didn't do much, but you're welcome. Are you planning on migrating all the mailboxes from the old server to this new one?
-- Stan
On 21/04/2011 03:32, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
A question about where the mail is actually supposed to be delivered to... initially I configured Exim4 to delivery the email to ~/Maildir and I noticed as you saw in the list directories like ~/Maildir/new and ~/Maildir/cur, however once I configured Evolution to login to Dovecot I noticed the directories ~/Maildir/INBOX/new and ~Maildir/INBOX/cur were created. Should therefore Exim4 be configured to ~/Maildir/INBOX instead of just ~/Maildir ?
It looks like your IMAP clients are configured to use a "server folder" of "INBOX" ... such a thing as you might need to do using Courier-IMAP (were you previously using Courier-IMAP?)
Your IMAP clients aren't seeing this folder so are creating it.
But configuring IMAP clients with a "server folder" of "INBOX" is not required with Dovecot because Dovecot does not require this "INBOX" prefix to all folders. (Though you can configure Dovecot to emulate the Courier-IMAP behaviour if you like.)
Exim is delivering to the root folder, but your IMAP clients are looking in the folder "INBOX". Because your clients are prefixing "INBOX" to all folder names, you can't get "up" to the root to see the messages.
Check the configuration of your IMAP clients to see if they have a "server folder" configured for "INBOX" (it may be called something other than "server folder" depending on what the IMAP client decides to call it).
Configuring Exim to deliver to $HOME/Maildir/ is normal and correct. You should get messages delivered as files to the directory $HOME/Maildir/new.
Configuring Dovecot with a mail location of maildir:~/Maildir is normal and correct and should cause Dovecot serve up (as the real IMAP INBOX folder, not a folder called "INBOX") the messages previously delivered by Exim using the above configuration.
There should be no need to specify LAYOUT=fs, unless you actually want that.
Check the configuration of your IMAP clients.
Another thing you could do is to make a fresh install of Thunderbird 3.1 and see what that thinks is in that IMAP account.
A fresh install of Thunderbird 3.1 will not have any spurious "server folder" configured by default and should show you all the messages in the real INBOX (not a folder called "INBOX").
Once you can see the messages in Thunderbird, you will then know that it is a configuration issue in your other IMAP clients.
Regards,
Bill
William Blunn put forth on 4/25/2011 3:34 PM:
On 21/04/2011 03:32, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
A question about where the mail is actually supposed to be delivered to... initially I configured Exim4 to delivery the email to ~/Maildir and I noticed as you saw in the list directories like ~/Maildir/new and ~/Maildir/cur, however once I configured Evolution to login to Dovecot I noticed the directories ~/Maildir/INBOX/new and ~Maildir/INBOX/cur were created. Should therefore Exim4 be configured to ~/Maildir/INBOX instead of just ~/Maildir ?
<snip>
I did not write any of this which is attributed to me. The OP wrote this. William you erred in your trim posting. I'm not offended but simply correcting the record.
-- Stan
participants (2)
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Stan Hoeppner
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William Blunn