I am attempting to migrate an ancient IMAP server to Dovecot 2.0.9 running on CentOS 6.3, while trying to minimize the impact on users. Most are using Outlook.

I have everything working, but have run into a couple of problems, neither horrible, but both weird. It started when I noticed Outlook shows the .subscriptions file in the folder listing. I figured out a way to prevent that (see below), but then decided to attempt the same tactic to move the .imap index structure out of the folder tree and ran into an interesting side-effect.

The .subscriptions issue would seem to be a bug, since the documentation I found implies Dovecot should be hiding it from list requests - as it does for the .imap index structure. I made a workaround by using the below mail_location setting. This puts the .subscriptions file above the imap folder structure and hence outside the list scope.

mail_location = mbox:~/imap:INBOX=~/mbox:CONTROL=~:INDEX=~/.imap

You'll note I have also moved the .imap index. This works, but the full path to the index files has extra layers of .imap. For example, if a folder tree of imap/A/B/C/D exists, where D is the actual mbox format message file, then the index files are stored in .imap/A/B/C/.imap/D. Don't know if this is a bug or I'm misunderstanding something.

Can you provide any insight or better solutions for either issue?

Some clients are also using iPhones and/or roundcubemail for web access. Those do not have the .subscriptions issue.

Raan