Hello,

I have Dovecot configured for multiple domains (usernames are user@domain.tld) and I wanted to enable shared mailboxes.

But there is some problem - if I share a folder, other user can't see it.

In the log I foud:

Apr 22 19:21:02 veverka dovecot: imap(user@veverka.tld): Error: Couldn't create namespace 'shared.' for user petr: userdb didn't return a home directory, but location used it (%h): maildir:%h/Maildir:INDEX=~/Maildir/shared/%%u Apr 22 19:21:02 veverka dovecot: imap(user@veverka.tld): Error: Couldn't create namespace 'shared.' for user emclient@veverka: userdb didn't return a home directory, but location used it (%h): maildir:%h/Maildir:INDEX=~/Maildir/shared/%%u

Which is weird because the user name is "petr.surname" not only "petr" and the domain is "veverka.tld" not only "veverka".

So I turned on SQL logging on my PostgreSQL and saw that Dovecot executes these queries:

2014-04-22 19:21:02 CEST LOG: statement: SELECT * FROM dovecot_uzivatel WHERE login = 'petr' AND domena = '' 2014-04-22 19:21:02 CEST LOG: statement: SELECT * FROM dovecot_uzivatel WHERE login = 'emclient' AND domena = 'veverka'

The first username was "petr.surname@veverka.tld" and the second one was "emclient@veverka.tld" so it seems that it was truncated right after first "." dot and I afraid that this is a bug. Then it is obvious that Dovecot can't find the home directory and complains in log (as mentioned above).

I found workaround – I had "." configured as namespace separator so I reconfigured it to "/" slash and now mailbox sharing works! But I think that it should work also with "." dot separator and the values should not be truncated in SQL queries. I tried also using '%u' in my SQL and its value was also truncated.

Values in "dovecot-acl" a "shared-mailboxes" files seem to be ok.

BTW: I have also another server with only one domain and simple user names (no dots) and there the mailbox sharing works – but now it seems that it works only accidentally. This might lead to hardly debuggable problems if someone has usernames with and without dots – mailbox sharing will work for some users but for some not.

My old configuration:

password_query = SELECT * FROM dovecot_heslo WHERE login = '%n' AND domena = '%d' user_query = SELECT * FROM dovecot_uzivatel WHERE login = '%n' AND domena = '%d' iterate_query = SELECT login AS username, domena AS domain FROM dovecot_uzivatel

namespace { type = shared separator = . prefix = shared.%%u. location = maildir:%h/Maildir:INDEX=~/Maildir/shared/%%u subscriptions = yes list = children }

Had to be reconfigured to:

separator = / prefix = shared/%%u/

Used version:

# dovecot --version 2.1.7 # uname -a Linux veverka 3.11.0-19-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 11 18:48:34 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Regards, Franta

P.S. If you have similar problem and have to switch from "." to "/" separators, don't forget to update your Sieve scripts (with fileinto). And sometimes also reconfiguration of the client is needed (e.g. NGImap4ConnectionStringSeparator in SOGo; and Kontact/KMail stopped working and I had to recreate the account in this client).