[Dovecot] Setting up mixed mbox and maildir
I'm trying to set up a dovecot server for which mail arrives in an mbox, and mail is stored in a maildir. The wiki (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces) refers to this as "Mixed mbox and Maildir". It advises handling this situation by creating two namespaces: one for the mbox and the other for the maildir. Each of these namespaces starts with namespace private {
On the other hand the sample configuration in the documentation puts inbox in a namespace starting with: namespace inbox { # Namespace type: private, shared or public #type = private
It appears that there has been a change in the configuration syntax
after the wiki was written, and that the word following namespace
no longer gives a property of the namespace, but rather its name.
Is this correct? In any case, how should the configuration be modified
to handle mixed mailboxes?
Thanks - jon
on 6/26/2012 1:35 PM Jonathan Ryshpan spake the following:
I'm trying to set up a dovecot server for which mail arrives in an mbox, and mail is stored in a maildir. The wiki (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces) refers to this as "Mixed mbox and Maildir". It advises handling this situation by creating two namespaces: one for the mbox and the other for the maildir. Each of these namespaces starts with namespace private {
On the other hand the sample configuration in the documentation puts inbox in a namespace starting with: namespace inbox { # Namespace type: private, shared or public #type = private
It appears that there has been a change in the configuration syntax after the wiki was written, and that the word following namespace no longer gives a property of the namespace, but rather its name.
Is this correct? In any case, how should the configuration be modified to handle mixed mailboxes?Thanks - jon
If you are working with 2.0 or later dovecot, you should be at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces
On Tue, 2012-06-26 at 13:48 -0700, Scott Silva wrote:
on 6/26/2012 1:35 PM Jonathan Ryshpan spake the following:
I'm trying to set up a dovecot server for which mail arrives in an mbox, and mail is stored in a maildir. The wiki (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces) refers to this as "Mixed mbox and Maildir". It advises handling this situation by creating two namespaces: one for the mbox and the other for the maildir. Each of these namespaces starts with namespace private {
On the other hand the sample configuration in the documentation puts inbox in a namespace starting with: namespace inbox { # Namespace type: private, shared or public #type = private
It appears that there has been a change in the configuration syntax after the wiki was written, and that the word following namespace no longer gives a property of the namespace, but rather its name.
Is this correct? In any case, how should the configuration be modified
If you are working with 2.0 or later dovecot, you should be at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces
I am using 2.1.7 . I surmise from this Namespace page that the form: namespace <type> { where <type> is one of "public", "private", or "shared" creates an unnamed namespace of type <type> while the form: namespace <name> { where <name> is none of "public", "private", or "shared", creates a namespace with the name <name> and the default type (unspecified on this page, but probably private). The namespace can be given the type desired by an (undocumented) namespace setting: namespace inbox ( type = <type> Is this correct?
Thanks - jon
on 6/26/2012 2:19 PM Jonathan Ryshpan spake the following:
On Tue, 2012-06-26 at 13:48 -0700, Scott Silva wrote:
on 6/26/2012 1:35 PM Jonathan Ryshpan spake the following:
I'm trying to set up a dovecot server for which mail arrives in an mbox, and mail is stored in a maildir. The wiki (see http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces) refers to this as "Mixed mbox and Maildir". It advises handling this situation by creating two namespaces: one for the mbox and the other for the maildir. Each of these namespaces starts with namespace private {
On the other hand the sample configuration in the documentation puts inbox in a namespace starting with: namespace inbox { # Namespace type: private, shared or public #type = private
It appears that there has been a change in the configuration syntax after the wiki was written, and that the word following namespace no longer gives a property of the namespace, but rather its name.
Is this correct? In any case, how should the configuration be modifiedIf you are working with 2.0 or later dovecot, you should be at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces
I am using 2.1.7 . I surmise from this Namespace page that the form: namespace <type> { where <type> is one of "public", "private", or "shared" creates an unnamed namespace of type <type> while the form: namespace <name> { where <name> is none of "public", "private", or "shared", creates a namespace with the name <name> and the default type (unspecified on this page, but probably private). The namespace can be given the type desired by an (undocumented) namespace setting: namespace inbox ( type = <type> Is this correct?
Thanks - jon
I am not sure, as I am using pure maildir... Follow the wiki, as there is an example there for mbox inbox and maildir message store...
Mixed mbox and Maildir
If you have your INBOX as mbox in /var/mail/username and the rest of the mailboxes in Maildir format under ~/Maildir, you can do this by creating two namespaces:
namespace { separator = / prefix = "#mbox/" location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u inbox = yes hidden = yes list = no } namespace { separator = / prefix = location = maildir:~/Maildir }
On 27.6.2012, at 0.19, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
If you are working with 2.0 or later dovecot, you should be at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces
I am using 2.1.7 . I surmise from this Namespace page that the form: namespace <type> { where <type> is one of "public", "private", or "shared" creates an unnamed namespace of type <type> while the form: namespace <name> { where <name> is none of "public", "private", or "shared", creates a namespace with the name <name> and the default type (unspecified on this page, but probably private).
I don't see any of that in the wiki2 page. Maybe you were looking at wiki1 page.
The namespace can be given the type desired by an (undocumented) namespace setting: namespace inbox ( type = <type> Is this correct?
It's mentioned in examples :) Yeah, could be more clearly mentioned in the wiki page too. Of course it's already in the example-config/conf.d/10-mail.conf file. The <name> part in namespace <name> { } should also be in the wiki page, although that's not namespace-specific thing at all, but works everywhere in dovecot.conf. It simply gives a (human-readable) name for the namespace within the configuration, it doesn't actually do anything.
On Wed, 2012-06-27 at 17:30 +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On 27.6.2012, at 0.19, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
If you are working with 2.0 or later dovecot, you should be at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces
I am using 2.1.7 . I surmise from this Namespace page that the form: namespace <type> { where <type> is one of "public", "private", or "shared" creates an unnamed namespace of type <type> while the form: namespace <name> { where <name> is none of "public", "private", or "shared", creates a namespace with the name <name> and the default type (unspecified on this page, but probably private).
I don't see any of that in the wiki2 page. Maybe you were looking at wiki1 page.
Quite right; this comes from a reading of pages in both wiki1 and wiki2. I now surmise that this isn't a good idea since wiki1 describes v1.x and wiki2 describes v2.x, which have different syntaxes (syntaces?). Is all this correct?
The namespace can be given the type desired by an (undocumented) namespace setting: namespace inbox ( type = <type> Is this correct?
It's mentioned in examples :) Yeah, could be more clearly mentioned in the wiki page too. Of course it's already in the example-config/conf.d/10-mail.conf file. The <name> part in namespace <name> { } should also be in the wiki page, although that's not namespace-specific thing at all, but works everywhere in dovecot.conf. It simply gives a (human-readable) name for the namespace within the configuration, it doesn't actually do anything.
It looks like it does *something*, since 15-mailboxes.conf contains the lines: # NOTE: Assumes "namespace inbox" has been defined in 10-mail.conf. namespace inbox {
I am continuing to attempt to set up dovecot to keep its mail store in maildir form while receiving it from an mbox, but without success. Dovecot reports the error that it can't create the file ~/mail/.imap/INBOX (and also that it can't chown it to user mail, not surprising since it doesn't exist). This seems reasonable, since jonrysh (that is me) is not a member of the group mail. What should be done next? Should I join the group mail? It seems that this should not be necessary in general. The mail store is in ~/maildir, so what is the function of the mbox ~/mail?
Dovecot must be misconfigured, but it's not clear to a newbie like myself what's wrong. Any advice would be appreciated. I have attached an extract from maillog showing the errors (dovecot.log) dovecot reports (dovecot.log), and the output of dovecot -n (dovecot-n).
Thanks for your help - jon
Jonathan Ryshpan jonrysh@pacbell.net wrote:
Quite right; this comes from a reading of pages in both wiki1 and wiki2. I now surmise that this isn't a good idea since wiki1 describes v1.x and wiki2 describes v2.x, which have different syntaxes (syntaces?). Is all this correct?
I too had a very hard time figuring out what was what in the new wiki for 2.1.7 and still havent figured it out and gave up since Ive had no time to get back into it. I had already spent 2-3 full days (in my spare time) trying to figure out the permissions nightmare in the logs.
I was only able to get mbox working so I gave up and went on to my next issue, getting it to work with my iphone. My iphone 4 is not even connecting to dovecot imap/imaps on 993 when I tried to set that up. Nothing in the logs, such frustration across the board.
Jeff
/mf/home/jeep/shell/.signature
On 28.6.2012, at 2.34, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
I am continuing to attempt to set up dovecot to keep its mail store in maildir form while receiving it from an mbox, but without success. Dovecot reports the error that it can't create the file ~/mail/.imap/INBOX (and also that it can't chown it to user mail, not surprising since it doesn't exist). This seems reasonable, since jonrysh (that is me) is not a member of the group mail. What should be done next? Should I join the group mail? It seems that this should not be necessary in general. The mail store is in ~/maildir, so what is the function of the mbox ~/mail?
Dovecot must be misconfigured, but it's not clear to a newbie like myself what's wrong. Any advice would be appreciated. I have attached an extract from maillog showing the errors (dovecot.log) dovecot reports (dovecot.log), and the output of dovecot -n (dovecot-n).
The log shows the URL for the explanation and the solution: http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Errors/ChgrpNoPerm
participants (4)
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jeep＠rahul.net
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Jonathan Ryshpan
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Scott Silva
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Timo Sirainen