[Dovecot] What is your dovecot setup?
I'd be really grateful if someone running a dovecot IMAP (or IMAPS) server could tell me exactly how their email folders are arranged.
What is the mail_location setting in /etc/dovecot.conf ?
What are the directories (or some of them) containing mail messages?
Does the client see an inbox folder? If so, what directory on the server contains these email messages?
Timothy Murphy wrote:
I'd be really grateful if someone running a dovecot IMAP (or IMAPS) server could tell me exactly how their email folders are arranged.
What is the mail_location setting in /etc/dovecot.conf ?
On my home one, I left it blank. On a system at another site, I have it set to "~/Maildir"
What are the directories (or some of them) containing mail messages?
~/Maildir/cur ~/Maildir/new ~/Maildir/.FolderNames/cur ~/Maildir/.FolderNames/new
Does the client see an inbox folder? If so, what directory on the server contains these email messages? My inbox mail appears to be in ~/Maildir/cur (and ~Maildir/new). However I also appear to have a ".INBOX" containing a few test messages. I suspect these are either Outlook's fault or I did it with a bad .procmailrc setup.
Hope that helps you a bit.
TB
This message is intended for the addressee named and may contain privileged information or confidential information or both. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it and notify the sender.
At 2:45 AM +0100 9/17/07, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I'd be really grateful if someone running a dovecot IMAP (or IMAPS) server could tell me exactly how their email folders are arranged.
Beware. You are asking to have other people tell you who you are. That usually does not work well.
What is the mail_location setting in /etc/dovecot.conf ?
I have no such file.
/usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf exists (and is used by my dovecot) and it does not have anything set for mail_location.
Perhaps I should add that I do not use the dovecot delivery agent, as it seems unneeded for my environment. I have Postfix delivering to ~/Maildir/ and dovecot finds my mail just fine.
What are the directories (or some of them) containing mail messages?
~/Maildir/new is where Postfix delivers new messages. ~Maildir/cur is where dovecot moves messages that it has seen. My mail clients do all the work for moving some messages to subdirectories in the maildir tree.
http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir describes the way dovecot implements the Maildir++ quasi-standard.
Does the client see an inbox folder?
Yes
If so, what directory on the server contains these email messages?
~/Maildir/cur
-- Bill Cole bill@scconsult.com
On Mon 17 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:
At 2:45 AM +0100 9/17/07, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I'd be really grateful if someone running a dovecot IMAP (or IMAPS) server could tell me exactly how their email folders are arranged.
Beware. You are asking to have other people tell you who you are. That usually does not work well.
Non capisco.
~/Maildir/new is where Postfix delivers new messages. ~Maildir/cur is where dovecot moves messages that it has seen. My mail clients do all the work for moving some messages to subdirectories in the maildir tree.
Where exactly do they move email to?
http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir describes the way dovecot implements the Maildir++ quasi-standard.
I don't think so. I just looked again at this document, but I'm afraid I find it more or less useless.
A concrete example of an actual mail setup and how this is seen by an IMAP client would have been much more useful, in my view.
Am Montag, 17. September 2007 schrieb Timothy Murphy:
~/Maildir/new is where Postfix delivers new messages. ~Maildir/cur is where dovecot moves messages that it has seen. My mail clients do all Where exactly do they move email to?
Just where Bill wrote: New mail is delivered to ~/Maildir/new and moved to ~/Maildir/cur once it has been accessed by a client. (Inbox)
http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir describes the way dovecot implements the Maildir++ quasi-standard. A concrete example of an actual mail setup and how this is seen by an IMAP client would have been much more useful, in my view.
There is an example of the Maildir++ directory layout on this page.
Greetings,
Gunter
-- *** Powered by AudioScrobbler --> http://www.last.fm/user/Interneci/ *** 23:59 | Within Temptation - All I Need 23:54 | Within Temptation - Final Destination 23:50 | Within Temptation - The Cross 23:44 | Within Temptation - Hand of Sorrow *** PGP-Verschlüsselung bei eMails erwünscht :-) *** PGP: 0x1128F25F ***
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007, Timothy Murphy wrote:
On Mon 17 Sep 2007, Gunter Ohrner wrote:
A concrete example of an actual mail setup and how this is seen by an IMAP client would have been much more useful, in my view.
There is an example of the Maildir++ directory layout on this page.
Er, which page?
You snipped one level of replies too many:
On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, Gunter Ohrner wrote:
Am Montag, 17. September 2007 schrieb Timothy Murphy:
http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir describes the way dovecot implements the Maildir++ quasi-standard. A concrete example of an actual mail setup and how this is seen by an IMAP client would have been much more useful, in my view.
There is an example of the Maildir++ directory layout on this page.
“this page” is then: http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir
Specifically, I think you'd want the section titled “Directory Structure”: http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir#line-74
At 1:55 PM +0100 9/17/07, Timothy Murphy imposed structure on a stream of electrons, yielding:
On Mon 17 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:
At 2:45 AM +0100 9/17/07, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I'd be really grateful if someone running a dovecot IMAP (or IMAPS) server could tell me exactly how their email folders are arranged.
Beware. You are asking to have other people tell you who you are. That usually does not work well.
Non capisco.
Dovecot is highly configurable for a reason: mail systems can be widely variable in design and complexity. Different sites have different needs, different admins have different whims.
To some extent, how you set up a mail system is an expression of your needs, your users' needs, and your personality.
~/Maildir/new is where Postfix delivers new messages. ~Maildir/cur is where dovecot moves messages that it has seen. My mail clients do all the work for moving some messages to subdirectories in the maildir tree.
Where exactly do they move email to?
They tell Dovecot to move them to other logical mailboxes. Those are implemented as additional Maildir-format directories inside ~/Maildir.
http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir describes the way dovecot implements the Maildir++ quasi-standard.
I don't think so. I just looked again at this document, but I'm afraid I find it more or less useless.
That's a terrible shame. You probably don't need to understand everything on that page, but it and the linked pages describing the Maildir structure answer everything you've asked.
A concrete example of an actual mail setup and how this is seen by an IMAP client would have been much more useful, in my view.
Aside from creating the top-level Maildir directory and telling whatever your delivery agent is where to find it (and perhaps telling Dovecot, if it is a strange place...), you don't need to set any of the Maildir structure up or go digging into it on the filesystem level. Dovecot presents an Inbox to IMAP clients, and IMAP clients can tell Dovecot to create whatever logical directory structures the user wants.
Of course, if you use a storage format other than Maildir then the answers are all different.
-- Bill Cole bill@scconsult.com
On Tue 18 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:
A concrete example of an actual mail setup and how this is seen by an IMAP client would have been much more useful, in my view.
Aside from creating the top-level Maildir directory and telling whatever your delivery agent is where to find it (and perhaps telling Dovecot, if it is a strange place...), you don't need to set any of the Maildir structure up or go digging into it on the filesystem level. Dovecot presents an Inbox to IMAP clients, and IMAP clients can tell Dovecot to create whatever logical directory structures the user wants.
Surely it would take far less time to give your actual setup than it would to explain (at length) how easy it is to set it up ...
Here is my server directory setup: ~/Maildir/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/.Family/[cur,new,tmp], etc.
My dovecot.conf sets mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/
My .procmailrc sets MAILDIR=/var/spool/mail DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
I cannot see the Family folder from my IMAPS client. Also it complains of the lack of .INBOX.directory ("Could Not Determine Resource Status").
My dovecot.conf sets mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/
dovecot has sometimes had trouble with "~". I use "%h" instead. (I think there is a mention of this on one of the wiki pages.) I don't recall if I changed to "%h" because I was having trouble or because I wanted to avoid trouble.
Here's what I have:
mail_location = maildir:%h/Maildir
On disk, I have ~/Maildir/cur/ (and new/ and tmp/) for the Inbox. I also have things like ~/Maildir/.Trash/cur/ (and new/ and tmp/).
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007, Timothy Murphy wrote:
On Tue 18 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:
A concrete example of an actual mail setup and how this is seen by an IMAP client would have been much more useful, in my view.
Aside from creating the top-level Maildir directory and telling whatever your delivery agent is where to find it (and perhaps telling Dovecot, if it is a strange place...), you don't need to set any of the Maildir structure up or go digging into it on the filesystem level. Dovecot presents an Inbox to IMAP clients, and IMAP clients can tell Dovecot to create whatever logical directory structures the user wants.
Surely it would take far less time to give your actual setup than it would to explain (at length) how easy it is to set it up ...
I'm inferring, since I'm not the original respondent, but it seems to me Bill is simply warning you about mucking about in the Maildir. And, if you weren't apparently having trouble with procmail delivery, it would be a valid point (Roughly, “Stay out of dovecot and your MDA's business, or you risk breaking things.”).
Here is my server directory setup: ~/Maildir/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/.Family/[cur,new,tmp], etc.
My dovecot.conf sets mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/
My .procmailrc sets MAILDIR=/var/spool/mail DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
I cannot see the Family folder from my IMAPS client.
Are you saying it differs from IMAP to IMAPS or merely stating that you're using an IMAPS client?
Also it complains of the lack of .INBOX.directory ("Could Not Determine Resource Status").
“it” = your IMAPS client or procmail?
For what it's worth, my setup:
# Note the lack of a trailing slash. # Pretty sure it shouldn't make a difference, since you've qualified it as # Maildir already with the ‘maildir:’ prefix, but...
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
namespace public { separator = / prefix = Shared/ location = maildir:/var/mail/Shared:CONTROL=~/Maildir/control/public:INDEX=~/Maildir/index/public } namespace private { separator = / prefix = inbox = yes }
Thus, my folders are also: ~/Maildir/{cur,tmp,new} ~/Maildir/.Junk E-mail/{cur,tmp,new} ... etc. ...
Plus: /var/mail/Shared/{cur,tmp,new} /var/mail/Shared/.subfolder/{cur,tmp,new} ... etc. ... # For more info on the shared folders: # http://wiki.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes#line-49
I could be wrong, but your .procmailrc MAILDIR setting doesn't look right to me. I know it's unrelated to Maildir-the-format, but is there some reason you're starting in the mail spool directory? Part of the point (in my eyes) of using Maildir-the-format is that it avoids having a world-writable vsm directory. ( See second bullet point at: http://cr.yp.to/qmail/vsm.txt )
For more info on procmail and MAILDIR: See Step 4 below this: (closest anchor; should scroll down a bit) http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/#rcDOTtesting
Specifically: “Make sure you replace MAILDIR=$HOME/Msgs with the directory where your personal (non-system-spool) mailboxes are stored and that this directory exists and is writable by your LOGNAME. The MAILDIR variable specifies Procmail's working directory and all relative paths are relative to this directory.”
The error message you quoted makes me think you used a relative path somewhere and that you can't create the .INBOX.directory{,/{cur,new,tmp}} folders underneath /var/spool/mail.
Part of my own .procmailrc: # Note that I don't explicitly set MAILDIR... # ...but I also never use an unqualified path (I always prepend $DEFAULT)
DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
# an example rule: :0
- ^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* $DEFAULT.Junk\ E-mail/
Best, Ben
At 2:10 AM +0100 9/18/07, Timothy Murphy imposed structure on a stream of electrons, yielding:
On Tue 18 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:
A concrete example of an actual mail setup and how this is seen by an IMAP client would have been much more useful, in my view.
Aside from creating the top-level Maildir directory and telling whatever your delivery agent is where to find it (and perhaps telling Dovecot, if it is a strange place...), you don't need to set any of the Maildir structure up or go digging into it on the filesystem level. Dovecot presents an Inbox to IMAP clients, and IMAP clients can tell Dovecot to create whatever logical directory structures the user wants.
Surely it would take far less time to give your actual setup than it would to explain (at length) how easy it is to set it up ...
The two dozen subfolders of my IMAP account are really not going to be helpful for you to know, and frankly, are none of your business.
Here is my server directory setup: ~/Maildir/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/.Family/[cur,new,tmp], etc.
My dovecot.conf sets mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/
That should not be necessary, since it is where Dovecot looks first, but it should be harmless.
My .procmailrc sets MAILDIR=/var/spool/mail DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
It's been a long time since I used procmail, but that looks wrong. See http://wiki.dovecot.org/procmail for details.
I cannot see the Family folder from my IMAPS client. Also it complains of the lack of .INBOX.directory ("Could Not Determine Resource Status").
A concrete problem description, at last.
Is .Family a proper Maildir++ directory? i.e. does it have a maildirfolder file in it? Missing that would cause Dovecot to not use it.
If your mail client (KMail?) provides a way to set the IMAP path prefix and it is set to INBOX, remove that. It looks like your client wants that prefix, which hints at you maybe having used Courier in the past... See http://wiki.dovecot.org/MissingMailboxes
-- Bill Cole bill@scconsult.com
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:
At 2:10 AM +0100 9/18/07, Timothy Murphy imposed structure on a stream of electrons, yielding:
I cannot see the Family folder from my IMAPS client. Also it complains of the lack of .INBOX.directory ("Could Not Determine Resource Status").
A concrete problem description, at last.
- Is .Family a proper Maildir++ directory? i.e. does it have a maildirfolder file in it? Missing that would cause Dovecot to not use it.
That's not true (in dovecot-1.0.3, at least). I have no problems accessing any of the subfolders under my ~/Maildir/, but:
$ find ~/Maildir -name cur | wc -l 18 $ find ~/Maildir -name maildirfolder | wc -l 5
i.e. Only 5 of 18 subfolders have that file. I think the dovecot-created folders have it, whereas the procmail-created folders do not. And, as a test:
$ find ~/Maildir -name maildirfolder -exec rm '{}' \;
had no ill effect on the visibility of my folders. That said, I also don't use quotas of any kind, so I can't speak as to its effects on the '++' of Maildir++.
Best, Ben
At 12:42 AM -0400 9/18/07, Benjamin R. Haskell imposed structure on a stream of electrons, yielding:
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:
At 2:10 AM +0100 9/18/07, Timothy Murphy imposed structure on a stream of electrons, yielding:
I cannot see the Family folder from my IMAPS client. Also it complains of the lack of .INBOX.directory ("Could Not Determine Resource Status").
A concrete problem description, at last.
- Is .Family a proper Maildir++ directory? i.e. does it have a maildirfolder file in it? Missing that would cause Dovecot to not use it.
That's not true (in dovecot-1.0.3, at least). I have no problems accessing any of the subfolders under my ~/Maildir/, but:
$ find ~/Maildir -name cur | wc -l 18 $ find ~/Maildir -name maildirfolder | wc -l 5
i.e. Only 5 of 18 subfolders have that file. I think the dovecot-created folders have it, whereas the procmail-created folders do not. And, as a test:
$ find ~/Maildir -name maildirfolder -exec rm '{}' \;
had no ill effect on the visibility of my folders. That said, I also don't use quotas of any kind, so I can't speak as to its effects on the '++' of Maildir++.
That's interesting.
I'm still using 1.0.0 and had a folder that did not appear to my clients until I added the maildirfolder file.
--
Bill Cole
bill@scconsult.com
On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 12:57:11AM -0400, Bill Cole wrote:
At 12:42 AM -0400 9/18/07, Benjamin R. Haskell imposed structure on a stream of electrons, yielding:
... [existence of maildirfolder file]
had no ill effect on the visibility of my folders. That said, I also don't use quotas of any kind, so I can't speak as to its effects on the '++' of Maildir++.
That's interesting.
I'm still using 1.0.0 and had a folder that did not appear to my clients until I added the maildirfolder file.
I think maildirfolder is only used for quotas, where the presence of this file indicates that there's a level higher in the folder hierarchy. Somehow this always strikes me as being backwards; a single marker file in the top level would be more efficient than having to have a marker file in each subfolder. It would make sense if you could remove this file to exempt a particular folder from contributing to the quota, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Anyway, I also have lots of folders without that file in it, but (as yet) am not using maildir quotas and am not impacted at all.
-mm- (who thought you had been watching JvV)
Timothy Murphy wrote:
Surely it would take far less time to give your actual setup than it would to explain (at length) how easy it is to set it up ...
Here is my server directory setup: ~/Maildir/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/.Family/[cur,new,tmp], etc.
My dovecot.conf sets mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/
My .procmailrc sets MAILDIR=/var/spool/mail DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
I cannot see the Family folder from my IMAPS client. Also it complains of the lack of .INBOX.directory ("Could Not Determine Resource Status").
Now we are talking. Not some useless "give me your setup", but "here what I have, and I have a problem".
Several questions to follow: put messages into it? All from within IMAP clent.
- Have you tried IMAP (not imaps)? This shouldn't be a problem, but still worth checking.
- "I cannot see the Family folder" means you can not see it in the list of all folders? in the list of subscribed folders? can not access it?
- How did you CREATE that "Family" folder? manually on the server or from the IMAP client? 3.1. Can you create a folder from the client? 3.2. If you can create one, can you see it? Can you access it? Can you
- Have you tried another client (you are using kmail, AFAIR), like Thunderbird? If not, try it.
I might have more questions for you later depending on your answers.
P.S. Forget about procmail for now. P.P.S. I have very simple config like yours on one of my servers (no procmail) and IMAPS works fine.
FiL
Timothy Murphy wrote:
I'd be really grateful if someone running a dovecot IMAP (or IMAPS) server could tell me exactly how their email folders are arranged.
A while back when I was running mid-size Dovecot installation on which mail spool was arranged something like
/san/%LUN/domain/%UID/inbox
Indexes were at /var/lib/dovecot/%LUN/domain/%UID/ or thereabouts.
Currently I am running just a small personal server where I use ~/Maildir/.
What is the mail_location setting in /etc/dovecot.conf ?
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:INDEX=/var/spool/dovecot/%u
Homes are on RAID-5 (compressed ZFS), INDEX location is on RAID-10 (also compressed ZFS).
Does the client see an inbox folder?
Yes.
If so, what directory on the server contains these email messages?
Standard Maildir locations
~/Maildir/new for unread messages ~/Maildir/cur for read messages
Tomi
participants (9)
-
Benjamin R. Haskell
-
Bill Cole
-
FiL
-
Gunter Ohrner
-
Mark E. Mallett
-
Tim Bates
-
Timothy Murphy
-
Tomi Hakala
-
WJCarpenter