This seems to be a FAQ: http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/list/dovecot/2004-February/002959.html

http://www.natalian.org/archives/2004/02/14/maildir/

When you use that maildirmake program or whatever, you need to prefix it with a '.'

Thanks Kai! Now that I understand better the Maildir need, I have another question:

Is ist possible to specify in dovecot.conf that inbox is in mbox format and to use Maildir for the rest of the folders? I remember having seen that somewhere in this same list, but I can't find the message anymore. I think that message said that it was not a supported feature, but the developers were working on it. For now, I don't see any hints in the conf file for configure the env to Maildir+Mbox, so I suppose it's still under development.

I don't want to fiddle much with sendmail, so I'd like to keep the mbox spool as default, but using with Maildir for the other IMAP folders (so as to support subfolders) in dovecot, and convert users' mbox imap folders manually. This would even be a nice feature which would integrate perfectly in new Fedora releases (sendmail mbox drop comes by default) as the configuration would be seamless.

I hope I have explained me correctly.

Thanks in advance again for the replies.

Manuel Moran

Manuel Moran Vaquero wrote:

Thanks Kai! Now that I understand better the Maildir need, I have another question:

The need for maildir w/ dovecot is not absolute. You can continue to use mbox within the ~/mail directory for each user, using the following line:

default_mail_env = mbox:~/:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u

You'll find that maildir performs better for larger mailboxes, however - but at the cost of slightly increased disk usage and inode usage (though in reality, you'll probably run out of the former far before the latter).

Is ist possible to specify in dovecot.conf that inbox is in mbox format and to use Maildir for the rest of the folders? I remember having seen that somewhere in this same list, but I can't find the message anymore. I think that message said that it was not a supported feature, but the developers were working on it. For now, I don't see any hints in the conf file for configure the env to Maildir+Mbox, so I suppose it's still under development.

To my knowledge, this was discussed in the past and is not possible, nor advisable.

I don't want to fiddle much with sendmail, so I'd like to keep the mbox spool as default, but using with Maildir for the other IMAP folders (so as to support subfolders) in dovecot, and convert users' mbox imap folders manually. This would even be a nice feature which would integrate perfectly in new Fedora releases (sendmail mbox drop comes by default) as the configuration would be seamless.

The transition to Maildir isn't a sendmail thing, but a procmail thing.

I simply added:

DEFAULT="$HOME/Maildir/" MAILDIR="$HOME/Maildir/"

to my /etc/procmailrc.

I made similar changes to /etc/profile, removing (or changing) the MAIL= environment, and setting the MAILDIR environment for programs like mutt/pine/etc.

I then changed the foldernames in individual .procmailrc's from:

Folder1/Mailbox1

to:

.Folder1.Mailbox1/ (trailing slash tells Procmail it's Maildir, and the period is the delimiter for Dovecot)

Then, I ran some scripts on my user's mbox directories to convert them to maildir (I posted them earlier this month - search archives), including the inbox, as well as subscribing each folder dovecot style. Worked flawlessly up to 3 levels deep.

This was under Red Hat 9, using the Dovecot SRPM from Fedora Core 1, then subsequently Rawhide to bring me up to 0.99.4, rebuilt for RH9.

HTH, -Rick

Rick Johnson, RHCE #807302311706007 - rjohnson@medata.com Linux/Network Administrator - Medata, Inc. PGP Public Key: https://mail.medata.com/pgp/rjohnson.asc

Sven Kirmess escribió:

I guess the better aproach would be to have an option like wu-imap which transfers the mbox-INBOX into the maildir-INBOX each time time INBOX is stated, or however that is called in IMAP. This could remove the absolut need for an LDA if used with sendmail.

Thanks, Sven! But I think I'll stick to the Rick Johnson's solution about modifying procmail delivery, and converting all users' mailboxes to Maildir.

This makes me think about the dovecot integration in Fedora Core 1. It works perfectly out of the box with sendmail, but as default on a mbox spool folder. It'd be nice if a Maildir skel was added to /etc/skel, and procmail delivering to that directory. But I'm sure that if they didn't already include this is because it has plenty of side-issues (like, probably, incompatibility with wu-imap).

Thanks all for your replies! They really helped!

Manuel Moran