[Dovecot] 1.0.alpha1: Namespaces

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Wolfram Schlich

6 Sep 2005 6 Sep '05

11:07 a.m.

Hi,

I'm currently using 1.0.alpha1 without luck regarding a namespace issue. Maybe it's a general understanding problem on my side, but let's see :-)

I would like to have my mail stored in Maildir format below ~/.maildir/, which works fine so far.

I want any (sub)folders to be created like this:

~/.maildir/
	/cur
	/new
	/tmp
	/.Folder/
		/cur
		/new
		/tmp
		/.Subfolder/
			/cur
			/new
			/tmp

BUT ;) Dovecot seems to disregard my namespace settings:

--8<--[ /etc/dovecot.conf ]--8<-- default_mail_env = maildir:~/.maildir:INDEX=MEMORY namespace private { separator = / # prefix = # location = maildir:~/.maildir inbox = yes hidden = no } --8<--

Every new (sub)folder I create is stored as

~/.maildir/.Folder
resp.
~/.maildir/.Folder.Subfolder

in the filesystem.

Are namespaces the right way? Is it possible at all?

Thanks in advance.

Wolfram Schlich

Show replies by date

Andrew Maier

6 Sep 6 Sep

12:01 p.m.

Hi,

yes I see a similar problem, I am also not able to use a / as a folder separator. Whatever I do, dovecot seems to insist in using a dot. This makes it impossible to set up mail to be read locally (e.g. with mutt) and remotely, using a imap client, which is what I want to do.

Any help welcome,

Andrew

Wolfram Schlich wrote:

...

Hi,

I'm currently using 1.0.alpha1 without luck regarding a namespace issue. Maybe it's a general understanding problem on my side, but let's see :-)

I would like to have my mail stored in Maildir format below ~/.maildir/, which works fine so far.

I want any (sub)folders to be created like this:

~/.maildir/ /cur /new /tmp /.Folder/ /cur /new /tmp /.Subfolder/ /cur /new /tmp

BUT ;) Dovecot seems to disregard my namespace settings:

--8<--[ /etc/dovecot.conf ]--8<-- default_mail_env = maildir:~/.maildir:INDEX=MEMORY namespace private { separator = / # prefix = # location = maildir:~/.maildir inbox = yes hidden = no } --8<--

Every new (sub)folder I create is stored as

~/.maildir/.Folder resp. ~/.maildir/.Folder.Subfolder

in the filesystem.

Are namespaces the right way? Is it possible at all?

Thanks in advance.

-- Andrew Maier andrew at maier dot name

Wolfram Schlich

12:10 p.m.

Andrew Maier andrew@maier.name [2005-09-06 12:01]:

...

Hi,

Hey Andrew!

...

yes I see a similar problem, I am also not able to use a / as a folder separator. Whatever I do, dovecot seems to insist in using a dot. This makes it impossible to set up mail to be read locally (e.g. with mutt) and remotely, using a imap client, which is what I want to do.

Well, you should be able to read mailboxes like

~/.maildir/.some.folder.here

with mutt locally (I've done that on a machine which runs Courier-IMAP).

Here's my ~/.muttrc from that machine: --8<-- set folder = ~/.maildir set mbox_type = Maildir set mbox = ~/.maildir set spoolfile = ~/.maildir set record = +.Sent unset move

mailboxes ! mailboxes +.Drafts mailboxes +.Templates mailboxes +.Trash mailboxes +.SomeFolder mailboxes +.SomeFolder.SomeSubFolder mailboxes +.OtherFolder mailboxes +.OtherFolder.OtherSubFolder --8<--

HTH

Wolfram Schlich

Steffen Kaiser

1:12 p.m.

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Wolfram Schlich wrote:

...

Every new (sub)folder I create is stored as

~/.maildir/.Folder resp. ~/.maildir/.Folder.Subfolder

in the filesystem.

Are namespaces the right way? Is it possible at all?

This is how MailDir works actually, the separator is for the client to know how to separate the mail subfolders and does not apply to mail storage.

Meaning: When a client talks to the IMAP server, it must use:

SELECT "Folder/Subfolder"

But on disk you always get .Folder.Subfolder, because MailDir is designed like that.

Bye,

-- Steffen Kaiser

Wolfram Schlich

1:32 p.m.

Steffen Kaiser skdovecot@smail.inf.fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de [2005-09-06 13:12]:

...

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Wolfram Schlich wrote:

...
Every new (sub)folder I create is stored as

~/.maildir/.Folder resp. ~/.maildir/.Folder.Subfolder

in the filesystem.

Are namespaces the right way? Is it possible at all?

This is how MailDir works actually, the separator is for the client to know how to separate the mail subfolders and does not apply to mail storage.

Meaning: When a client talks to the IMAP server, it must use:

SELECT "Folder/Subfolder"

But on disk you always get .Folder.Subfolder, because MailDir is designed like that.

Ah! Thanks for clearing that up. Do you have any design document reference at hand?

Wolfram Schlich

Steffen Kaiser

3:24 p.m.

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Wolfram Schlich wrote:

...

Ah! Thanks for clearing that up. Do you have any design document reference at hand?

http://www.inter7.com/courierimap/README.maildirquota.html

quote:

"Can folders have subfolders, defined in a recursive fashion? The answer is no. If you want to have a client with a hierarchy of folders, emulate it. Pick a hierarchy separator character, say ":". Then, folder foo/bar is subdirectory .foo:bar."

Bye,

-- Steffen Kaiser

Andy Cravens

7:21 p.m.

I need to do the same thing, emulate the hierarchy of folders. However, I do not completely understand the concept of namespaces. I have read the configuration file and the documentation on the dovecot web site and I just don't get it. Can someone explain it differently?

I already have dovecot running on a test server and do not have any namespaces defined. I am moving our user's mbox files to the new server and converting to maildir. Everything works fine except that I don't know how to handle users who have mboxes in subfolders. After reading these recent messages on namespaces I've come to the conclusion I need to emulate the directory structore which involves the implementation of a namespace and defining a hierarchy separator.

In the example below by Steffen, they used : as the separator. Other examples I have seen use / as the separator. Is one separator better suited for a situation than another?

-- Andy

Steffen Kaiser wrote:

...

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Wolfram Schlich wrote:

...
Ah! Thanks for clearing that up. Do you have any design document reference at hand?

http://www.inter7.com/courierimap/README.maildirquota.html

quote:

"Can folders have subfolders, defined in a recursive fashion? The answer is no. If you want to have a client with a hierarchy of folders, emulate it. Pick a hierarchy separator character, say ":". Then, folder foo/bar is subdirectory .foo:bar."

Bye,

Jon Roma

10:04 p.m.

Andy:

Namespaces are not a concept peculiar to Dovecot -- they're an extension to the IMAP protocol and are documented in RFC 2342.

<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2342.html>

Think of a namespace as a separate tree containing mail. One of the more common applications of namespace is to have one's normal private namespace for one's personal mail, and a shared namespace for group mailboxes.

Dovecot, as of the 1.0 tree, supports some namespace functionality -- basically the parts that are most useful (IMHO).

Namespaces in mbox format consist of a directory hierarchy containing mailboxes as plain files within that tree. A mailbox either contains mail (i.e., the mailbox is a plain file) or a container for one or more mailboxes (i.e., the mailbox is a directory).

Namespaces in maildir format consist of a tree of directories. The hierarchy, however, is expressed differently than with a mbox tree. With maildir format, all folders are rooted in a common directory but their names -- in dot-separated format -- define the logical hierarchy. In the example below, each of the dot-separated components are presented by an IMAP server as one level of a tree structure.

ls -as /var/imap/dovecot/roma/ 1 .Personal.Lists.Dovecot/ 1 .Personal.Lists.Illiana railroad list/ 1 .Personal.Lists.Oil history list/

You don't necessarily need a distinct namespace to do what you want, provided that you organize your mail as you want. If you want folders that can contain both mail as well as subordinate folders, you need maildir.

If your users have an existing hierarchy of folders in mbox form, you can certainly support this with or without namespaces defined in Dovecot.

I hope that this answers your basic questions. Perhaps the RFC will be helpful, though it's possibly more than you likely want to know!

Andy Cravens acravens@uen.org wrote:

...

I need to do the same thing, emulate the hierarchy of folders. However, I do not completely understand the concept of namespaces. I have read the configuration file and the documentation on the dovecot web site and I just don't get it. Can someone explain it differently?

I already have dovecot running on a test server and do not have any namespaces defined. I am moving our user's mbox files to the new server and converting to maildir. Everything works fine except that I don't know how to handle users who have mboxes in subfolders. After reading these recent messages on namespaces I've come to the conclusion I need to emulate the directory structore which involves the implementation of a namespace and defining a hierarchy separator. In the example below by Steffen, they used : as the separator. Other examples I have seen use / as the separator. Is one separator better suited for a situation than another?

Andy

Steffen Kaiser wrote:

...
On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Wolfram Schlich wrote:

...
Ah! Thanks for clearing that up. Do you have any design document reference at hand?

http://www.inter7.com/courierimap/README.maildirquota.html

quote:

"Can folders have subfolders, defined in a recursive fashion? The answer is no. If you want to have a client with a hierarchy of folders, emulate it. Pick a hierarchy separator character, say ":". Then, folder foo/bar is subdirectory .foo:bar."

Bye,

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7 comments

5 participants

participants (5)

Andrew Maier
Andy Cravens
Jon Roma
Steffen Kaiser
Wolfram Schlich