[Dovecot] Concerns switching from Courier to Dovecot
[ I'm posting this again since I wasn't subscribed to the list when I first posted. I'm sorry if this gets posted twice]
I was considering replacing Courier-IMAP with dovecot in the future, but have some concerns. I realize that some things simply haven't been finished yet like quotas, but some other things may prevent me from using dovecot as a drop in replacement in the future.
Subfolders have different names in the file system. A folder (INBOX.subfolder) is named ".subfolder" in Courier, but "INBOX.subfolder" in dovecot. I can't simply rename all the subfolders, because our customers have direct access to the maildirs, and write to it directly with procmail and mail clients like mutt.
Certain files have different names, but contain the same information. For example, the subscription lists and UID files look the same to me but have different names. I suppose they could be converted, but this would make it difficult to run both IMAP servers side-by-side, which I'd like to do until dovecot has all the features I need.
I also heard talk of the hierarchy separator being changed from "." to "/".
Now, is it possible configuration options could be added to allow for better Courier compatibility? I would be willing to help with this.
Thanks!
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- Brian
On Wed, 2003-07-09 at 22:04, marcotte@panix.com wrote:
Subfolders have different names in the file system. A folder (INBOX.subfolder) is named ".subfolder" in Courier, but "INBOX.subfolder" in dovecot. I can't simply rename all the subfolders, because our customers have direct access to the maildirs, and write to it directly with procmail and mail clients like mutt.
No, that's not the problem. Problem is that you have your clients configured to use "INBOX." prefix for mailboxes which Dovecot doesn't want.
That is the biggest compatibility problem between them, as it requires changes in client configuration. I have plans to make INBOX-prefix configurable, but it's not there yet.. Maybe I'll continue the configuration file changes today after which it's easier to add the namespace configuration..
Certain files have different names, but contain the same information. For example, the subscription lists and UID files look the same to me but have different names. I suppose they could be converted, but this would make it difficult to run both IMAP servers side-by-side, which I'd like to do until dovecot has all the features I need.
You'd currently have to recompile Dovecot with the new filenames, but that's pretty easy to do. And I think I'll make these filenames also configurable from config file.
I also heard talk of the hierarchy separator being changed from "." to "/".
Yes, but it's not there yet. And again I think I'll make it configurable and leave the default to "." as it is now.
Now, is it possible configuration options could be added to allow for better Courier compatibility? I would be willing to help with this.
In the namespace configuration, yes :)
On Wed 09 Jul 02003 at 10:17:10PM +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Wed, 2003-07-09 at 22:04, marcotte@panix.com wrote:
Subfolders have different names in the file system. A folder (INBOX.subfolder) is named ".subfolder" in Courier, but "INBOX.subfolder" in dovecot. I can't simply rename all the subfolders, because our customers have direct access to the maildirs, and write to it directly with procmail and mail clients like mutt.
No, that's not the problem. Problem is that you have your clients configured to use "INBOX." prefix for mailboxes which Dovecot doesn't want.
Can anyone explain how to do this with Mutt?
-- Jacob Elder
Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi writes:
You'd currently have to recompile Dovecot with the new filenames, but that's pretty easy to do. And I think I'll make these filenames also configurable from config file.
Don't add too many options. Removing options that aren't directly necessary is bliss. Adding a compile-time option to switch the whole set of names to "Dovecot mode" or "Courier-IMAP" mode is sufficient, if at all needed. Dovecot has yet to see its 1.0 release, so changing the default file names NOW is easier done than later.
-- Matthias Andree
On Thu, 2003-07-10 at 03:23, Matthias Andree wrote:
You'd currently have to recompile Dovecot with the new filenames, but that's pretty easy to do. And I think I'll make these filenames also configurable from config file.
Don't add too many options. Removing options that aren't directly necessary is bliss. Adding a compile-time option to switch the whole set of names to "Dovecot mode" or "Courier-IMAP" mode is sufficient, if at all needed. Dovecot has yet to see its 1.0 release, so changing the default file names NOW is easier done than later.
I agree that there shouldn't be too many options, but I'm beginning to think there should be some settings to make it easy for people to install Dovecot from binary packages and easily try it along existing Courier or UW-IMAP installation.
That'd mean mostly two settings: location for subscriptions file and location for Maildir file <-> UID mappings file.
participants (4)
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Jacob Elder
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marcotte＠panix.com
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Matthias Andree
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Timo Sirainen