We have just migrated from cyrus-imap to dovecot 2.2.9 on Ubuntu. By default, all our user's manually created folders appear at the same folder level as INBOX (i.e., they are next to INBOX, and not inside INBOX in a typical tree view of the folders).

But on Dovecot, users are able to create new folders either parallel to INBOX or as subfolders within INBOX, which I think is going to lead to confusion for our users, especially when working from the limited UI of a smartphone client where folder hierarchy is not as easy to visualize.

With cyrus, this behavior depended on the client setting for "IMAP server directory" as it is called in Thunderbird. If the setting was given the value "INBOX", then all folders were parallel to INBOX and you could not create any folder that would appear in the tree inside INBOX. With the setting empty, then all folders appeared as subfolders of INBOX. It was all or nothing.

When the mail accounts were migrated to dovecot, the existing top-level user folders were created in dovecot at the same level as INBOX. We did nothing intentional to get this result. We just used cyrus2dovecot to export to maildir, then doveadm sync to convert to the final sdbox.

With dovecot, when "IMAP server directory" is empty, we get the original folder tree with all folders parallel to inbox, but users are also able to create subfolders inside INBOX . We are using sdbox storage and the folder heirarchy as seen in the client tree (parallel folders and subfolders) is also reflected in the server's local file system.

If we change the "IMAP server directory" setting on the client while using dovecot, then all the folders that were previously at the same level as INBOX become inaccessible, so that's not a viable option.

So, my question is this: Can I replicate the cyrus behavior where INBOX subfolders are an all-or-nothing option? Or are we stuck with users (having questionable file management skills in the first place) getting lost between INBOX subfolders and top-level folders.

Thanks,

Jeff

root:~# doveconf -n # 2.2.9: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 3.13.0-40-generic x86_64 Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS auth_mechanisms = plain login auth_verbose = yes listen = * mail_location = sdbox:%h:LAYOUT=fs:ALT=/var/alt-vmail/%n mail_plugins = " quota" managesieve_notify_capability = mailto managesieve_sieve_capability = fileinto reject envelope encoded-character vacation subaddress comparator-i;ascii-numeric relational regex imap4flags copy include variables body enotify environment mailbox date ihave namespace inbox { inbox = yes location = mailbox Drafts { special_use = \Drafts } mailbox Junk { special_use = \Junk } mailbox Sent { special_use = \Sent } mailbox "Sent Messages" { special_use = \Sent } mailbox Trash { special_use = \Trash } prefix = separator = / } passdb { args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot-ldap.conf.ext driver = ldap } plugin { quota = dict:%n::file:%h/dovecot-quota quota_grace = 10%% quota_rule = *:storage=100M quota_rule2 = Trash:storage=+20M sieve = ~/.dovecot.sieve sieve_dir = ~/sieve } protocols = " imap sieve" service auth { unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth { group = postfix mode = 0666 user = postfix } unix_listener auth-userdb { mode = 0666 } } service imap-login { inet_listener imap { address = localhost port = 143 } inet_listener imaps { port = 0 } } service managesieve-login { inet_listener sieve { address = localhost port = 4190 } } ssl = required ssl_cert =