I haven't been able to make this work. I've experimented with different settings in my dovecot.conf for hours.

I have a simple single user ubuntu setup, nothing fancy and would just like to have a virtual "unread" folder of my main INBOX, for use with Squirrelmail

So, with just this, all good... subfolders look like .INBOX.duplicates for example in the file system

namespace private { separator = . location = maildir:~/Maildir inbox = yes }

now, when I try to add a virtual namespace

namespace private { subscriptions = yes list = yes inbox = no prefix = virtual. separator = . location = virtual:~/Maildir/virtual }

~/Maildir/virtual does exist in the filesystem, I can "subscribe" to virtual but if I try to create a sub folder of it I get

ERROR: Could not complete request. Query: CREATE "virtual.test" Reason Given: [CANNOT] Can't create virtual mailboxes

Squirrelmail is great because it has some nice IMAP testing tools, so for example, with my current dovecot config I can test the NAMESPACE command, is that the correct response?

Request: A003 NAMESPACE Response:

• NAMESPACE (("" ".")("virtual." ".")) NIL NIL Namespace completed.

I'm sure the issue is a fundamental lack of understanding of a concept here ... Any help would be appreciated.

thank you, -Jim