Hi list, Daniel,

Finalle got around to try this out. I need to use the same username/password as with the dovecot main mailbox, so I dedited your config sample like this:

imapc_host = old.mail.server imapc_user = %u imapc_password = %w

namespace { type = private separator = / prefix = oldmail/ location = imapc: inbox = no hidden = no list = yes }

However the %w is not expanded to the users password, but instead "%w" is tried as a password, and therefore obviously things fail.

Without adding imapc_user / imapc_password, I get the following error:

imap(username): Error: user username: Initialization failed: Namespace 'oldmail/': imapc: missing imapc_password

How can I get the %w to expand properly, because I think then things would work...?

Regards, Mourik Jan

I would try to create a private namespace "oldmail" http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces with an imapc proxy http://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/ImapcProxy

I didn't test it, but configuration could look like this:

imapc_host = oldmailserver namespace { type = private separator = / prefix = oldmail/ location = imapc: inbox = no hidden = no list = yes }

http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Variables states that %w only works for Dovecot-auth so this does not seem to work for imap client proxy. I read that, yes. However I didn't know how this works, but I expected dovecot-auth (whatever that may be) to perform the authentication to the old mailserver, so I thought: "I guess %w must be available then..."

Anyway, thanks for pointing that out.

I assume you will need to use a master user (masteruser) to login on behalf of the actual user (loginuser), since the user should be already authenticated when he sees the namespace "oldmail". Yep, I have just tried that approach, and it works fine. Thanks!

There is just one thing left to sort out: From the moment we have migrated to dovecot, new accounts will not be (manually) created anymore on our old server, meaning: more and more mailboxes will become unavailable on the old server.

It seems (but I have not yet done a lot of testing) that if the imapc cannot 'mount' the old mailbox, the imap process 'dies'. (that's what squirrelmail tells me)

Since you know so much... :-) Do you happen to know a way to make the imapc non-mandatory..? Like: when 'mounting' fails: simply ignore it, and proceed as normal.

Thanks very much for you kind assistance!

Mourik Jan

Hoi Daniel,

Additional namespaces can be dynamically added via environment variables.

Try to add the "oldspace" namespace dynamically using PostLoginScripting http://wiki2.dovecot.org/PostLoginScripting if an old mailbox is available for $ENV{'USER'}

Thanks very much for your kind help and assistance!

Mourik Jan