On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Frank Elsner frank@moltke28.b.shuttle.de wrote:

It might be useful to tell Thunderbird not only to show subscribed folders. Edit -> Account settings -> Server settings -> Advanced, first check box.

There are some MUAs which create folders but do not add subscriptions for the folders. The sylpheed I currently use is such a beast :-)

In Thunderbird that option is already checked and it wouldn't explain why webmail (RoundCube) shows the exact same thing. I can't delete the folder from Thunderbird and I don't see it when I login to the mail server via shell. I am thinking there is something wrong with the folder listing or something like that.

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Rick Romero rick@havokmon.com wrote:

The entire structure doesn't look correct for Maildir. The folders you listed, puts you already in the INBOX, so your MUA should be seeing: INBOX
Drafts INBOX
ClamAV Dell.Quotes Dell.Warranty etc.etc.etc.. Sent Spam Trash

If you are not seeing the folders in that order, then I think your dovecot.conf isn't quite right.  Please post the output of dovecot -n

No I don't appear to be seeing this and I think the fact that I have used different mail clients (Thunderbird, Evolution, etc etc etc) and think that their default folder structure may have made a mess on my IMAP Maildir structure over the years.

Below is my dovecot -n:

[root@mail Maildir]# dovecot -n # 1.0.7: /etc/dovecot.conf protocols: imap ssl_cert_file: /srv/ssl/ghost.crt ssl_key_file: /srv/ssl/ghost.key login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir auth default: mechanisms: plain login passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd socket: type: listen client: path: /var/spool/postfix/private/auth mode: 432 user: postfix group: postfix

Beyond that I don't know why it's messed up and more importantly, how I can fix it. Any suggestions?

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Rick Romero rick@havokmon.com wrote:

Try adding a namespace.

namespace private { separator = . prefix = INBOX. inbox = yes }

I made that change and reloaded Dovecot and all my users on the mail server lost the folders...

Quoting "Carlos Williams" carloswill@gmail.com:

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Carlos Williams
carloswill@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Rick Romero rick@havokmon.com wrote:

...

Try adding a namespace.

namespace private { separator = . prefix = INBOX. inbox = yes }

I made that change and reloaded Dovecot and all my users on the mail server lost the folders...

Sorry - I was wrong. This didn't remove anything from my server. I guess it helps when you issue the ls -la command. I was just being paranoid. My question now is how do I clean up my Maildir/ to how it should be?

No problem - it's the display that was changed due to the namespace config.

Right now after the change and successfully restarting IMAP, I have the following directory when I login to Linux. I haven't opened up any mail clients yet...

Do your users have their mailboxes back? That's the first thing. If
you're the only one with a funky layout, then forget yours, and get
theirs back to normal. :) So instead of changing the namespace, I suppose it would be better to
conform your mailbox to what the server expects. So I guess I'd do:

mv .INBOX.CDW .CDW mv .INBOX.Dell .Dell mv .INBOX.Dell.Certification .Dell.Certification etc etc etc

Your .INBOX/ directory should contain cur/ new/ and tmp/ directories,
where you can move/copy the individual emails into your
~home/Maildir/cur/ new/ tmp/

Maybe you had a MUA with a .INBOX prefix set, and when you created
your folders, it stuck that in there... ?

Rick

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Rick Romero rick@havokmon.com wrote:

Yikes!  I thought this was a private install. :(  The namespace would be a pretty radical change.  It tells dovecot how to present folders.

I'm not a namespace guru - but I'm fairly sure that's the issue. http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces

I would suggest creating an alternate config file, using different ports and system directories, to test a namespace change.

It's OK. It appears to not have impacted any existing data. Perhaps just changes how the new folders are managed. I did see a file in my Maildir called 'subscriptions' and when I opened it with a text editor, it had the old invalid IMAP directory structure...should I delete or rename this file on my mailbox and then restart the client to force it to re-build this subscriptions file?

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 3:21 PM, Rick Romero rick@havokmon.com wrote:

The subscriptions file is only used by the MUAs, and you can set them to ignore it.  I would just tell the MUAs to ignore it.  You can safely delete it - except if you have an MUA that is using it then the folders will disappear...

I suppose if you have a PDA and a huge folder structure you might have the PDA use subscriptions and trim down the folder list...

I would 'start fresh' and remove it.

When I remove this file, my mail clients (webmail & Thunderbird) no longer see any of my sub folders. How can I remove this file if it holds obsolete data and still be able to see my Inbox sub folders?

I reverted back to my original dovecot.conf file as when I posted my original. No changes basically have been made. When I add your suggestion for namespace to my config, I for some reason then have a main Inbox folder in my mail client and then it has a subdirectory called inbox and that has all my IMAP folders listed. So it's a bit redundant for the Inbox folder only.

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Brian Hayden bhayden@umn.edu wrote:

You need to:

1. Remove your subscriptions file.

This I did. Now I can no longer see from the client side any of my IMAP folders.

2. Set your client to ignore subscriptions and view all folders.

I logged into my webmail and in the main mailbox view all my IMAP folders except for Inbox and the default ones were missing. I then opened up the folders settings option and 'subscribed' to all the folders I didn't see in my main mailbox view. Once I enabled 'subscription' via webmail, I could then see all my folders again. Is this wrong? You stated the opposite should be done. I would think if they were not selected for subscription, I would see them but it appears to be the other way around. How can I see my messages on my email client with out the 'subscriptions' file in my Maildir? I am assuming this questions' answer varies depending on what client we're talking about, no?

3. Then, and only then, settle on a server configuration (including any namespaces you may choose to use), and then re-subscribe to folders in your client (if you are going to insist on using subscriptions).

It's impossible to get your server configuration correct if you're judging the user-visible side by a client using legacy subscriptions, particularly if the subscriptions file is in an unreliable state (as it sounds like yours is--as most of them almost always are).

I just can't see how to get any IMAP client to read IMAP folders w/o that 'subscriptions' file. It appears that it looks for it or is in some way dependent on this file. Am I wrong?

On 2/25/2010 4:35 PM, Carlos Williams wrote:

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Brian Haydenbhayden@umn.edu wrote:

...

You need to:

1. Remove your subscriptions file.

This I did. Now I can no longer see from the client side any of my IMAP folders.

...

2. Set your client to ignore subscriptions and view all folders.

I logged into my webmail and in the main mailbox view all my IMAP folders except for Inbox and the default ones were missing. I then opened up the folders settings option and 'subscribed' to all the folders I didn't see in my main mailbox view. Once I enabled 'subscription' via webmail, I could then see all my folders again. Is this wrong? You stated the opposite should be done. I would think if they were not selected for subscription, I would see them but it appears to be the other way around. How can I see my messages on my email client with out the 'subscriptions' file in my Maildir? I am assuming this questions' answer varies depending on what client we're talking about, no?

...

3. Then, and only then, settle on a server configuration (including any namespaces you may choose to use), and then re-subscribe to folders in your client (if you are going to insist on using subscriptions).

It's impossible to get your server configuration correct if you're judging the user-visible side by a client using legacy subscriptions, particularly if the subscriptions file is in an unreliable state (as it sounds like yours is--as most of them almost always are).

I just can't see how to get any IMAP client to read IMAP folders w/o that 'subscriptions' file. It appears that it looks for it or is in some way dependent on this file. Am I wrong?

The subscriptions file is technically optional. For instance, Thunderbird has a setting to either use nor not use it. If TB uses subscriptions then you need to subscribe to all folders that you want to see. Otherwise it will show all folders.

Dunno about your webmail, however as an example SquirrelMail uses subscriptions, no way around it.

With this combination, I'd enable webmail subscriptions and disable TB's use of subscriptions.

For TB if you want to ignore subscriptions, go into your Account Settings, select Server Settings under the correct account, click the Advanced button in the Server Settings sub-box, and uncheck "Show only subscribed folders".

Leeman

Hello,

Le 27/02/10 09:45, Stan Hoeppner a écrit :

Brian Hayden put forth on 2/25/2010 3:10 PM:

To add insult to injury, mailbox migration from Exch 5.5 IMAP to Dovecot IMAP was done using TB as the conduit, simply copying folders from one "account" to another. Took forever, but it was the only reliable way I could think of at the time to do it. It actually went very smoothly.

imapsync is a _very_ useful tool to accomplish this. I don't know Exchange, but if it allows you to have a kind of "admin" account having access to all accounts or at least one at a time (and automatically select which one), you can even automate the migration. On Dovecot, I set a non-real user account, with the mailbox path being the same as the user under migration.

A few scripting and you're done.

I've used it to move accounts from Gmail to Dovecot and from Cyrus IMAP to Dovecot. Only pay attention with Gmail special IMAP folders: "All Messages" and so forth.

Regards,

-- Baptiste MALGUY - http://www.malguy.net PGP fingerprint: 49B0 4F6E 4AA8 B149 B2DF 9267 0F65 6C1C C473 6EC2

Brian Hayden put forth on 2/27/2010 8:28 AM:

On Feb 27 2010, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

...

To add insult to injury, mailbox migration from Exch 5.5 IMAP to Dovecot IMAP was done using TB as the conduit, simply copying folders from one "account" to another. Took forever, but it was the only reliable way I could think of at the time to do it. It actually went very smoothly.

How large is the user base? Are the clients managed? And are you sure you haven't had any problems... only a very small number of users generally complain to relevant parties about a given issue, they grouse about it to their friends and colleagues.

Very small. Manual client management. No problems after the migration. If I complain, I'm sure I'll hear myself. ;) The migration I mentioned was my vanity server. If I were supporting an IMAP infrastructure at a $dayjob environment I would have never gone this route. And I probably wouldn't have been upgrading directly from Exchange 5.5 (which was EOL'd in like 1999 or 2000) to Dovecot 1.0.15. ;) I can't imagine an org that would have held onto Exch 5.5 into 2009, given that service packs and hotfixes ceased around a decade ago.

It's definitely possible to make it work with tight control. In a large, unmanaged environment, it really isn't. Unless you want to posit that the 80k users I dealt with for ten years on this were exceptionally stupid. ;)

That would depend on who those 80K users were. If they were federal employees, worse yet, HUD or USPS employees, I'd guess the stupidity meter would run pretty high. ;)

-- Stan

Jerry put forth on 2/27/2010 9:54 AM:

On Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:11:52 -0600 Stan Hoeppner stan@hardwarefreak.com articulated:

...

Very small. Manual client management. No problems after the migration. If I complain, I'm sure I'll hear myself. ;) The migration I mentioned was my vanity server. If I were supporting an IMAP infrastructure at a $dayjob environment I would have never gone this route. And I probably wouldn't have been upgrading directly from Exchange 5.5 (which was EOL'd in like 1999 or 2000) to Dovecot 1.0.15. ;) I can't imagine an org that would have held onto Exch 5.5 into 2009, given that service packs and hotfixes ceased around a decade ago.

January 31, 2006 http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2007/support/lifecycle/changes.mspx

Exchange 5.5 was released November 1997.

EOL schedule dictated that mainstream support ended in 2003. Extended support isn't worth the cost and most orgs upgrade rather than keep old, not very well supported, M$ products around. Extended support is customer requested hotfixes and security updates. Keep in mind these security updates are prompted by customer request when they find a hole. During extended support, M$ is expending very few resources to support the EOL product. Thus, there are many security holes that go unnoticed. For all practical purposes for most customers, Exch 5.5 support effectively ended in 2003, 7 years ago.

-- Stan