[Dovecot] .mailboxlist -> .subscriptions
I've mostly finished a conversion from an old Centos 3 UW-Imap server to a new Centos 6 dovecot server. I did not copy the old ~/.mailboxlist file to ~/mail/.subscriptions file, but notice some users have the latter file now. These are all mbox folders on the old and new server.
I'm getting ready to do the same to another old/new pair of servers and I'm wondering if there is an advantage of doing the copy. I'm assuming the .subscription files are created when they access their account through our webmail application, but I'm not sure if it was automatic or due to a "subscribe" action done manually. There are 49 accounts with a .mailboxlist file and only 4 with the new .subscriptions file. So either our webmail application isn't being used a lot or there's a problem with it due to the missing .subscriptions file, but the phone usually rings pretty quickly when problems arise.
One last question, please.
Over the years, some imap accounts had their folders directly in their home directory and the contents of the .mailboxlist file would have an entry with just the name of the folder in it (Trash, eg), and most had the folders in their ~/mail folder with an entry like "mail/Trash". Our webmail app, Horde/Imp, always seemed to take care of this. If I create the .subscription file for the users during the move to the new server, should I move the folders to the mail directory and amend their .subscriptions file to reflect that change on these odd ball accounts, and will that affect how their client is seeing these?
The first server conversion was a bear due to my lack of dovecot knowledge. I've since learned a little more, and mostly found out that dovecot is a more complex application than the old imap application. There's so much more that can be done with dovecot, whereas the old imap server was mostly just load-and-go. Seems like no matter how much I read, the more I discovered I didn't know.
Anyway, thanks for all the past help and any opinions anyone might decide to offer on this post.
steve campbell
On 3/14/2012 10:46 AM, Steve Campbell wrote:
One last question, please.
Over the years, some imap accounts had their folders directly in their home directory and the contents of the .mailboxlist file would have an entry with just the name of the folder in it (Trash, eg), and most had the folders in their ~/mail folder with an entry like "mail/Trash". Our webmail app, Horde/Imp, always seemed to take care of this. If I create the .subscription file for the users during the move to the new server, should I move the folders to the mail directory and amend their .subscriptions file to reflect that change on these odd ball accounts, and will that affect how their client is seeing these?
The first server conversion was a bear due to my lack of dovecot knowledge. I've since learned a little more, and mostly found out that dovecot is a more complex application than the old imap application. There's so much more that can be done with dovecot, whereas the old imap server was mostly just load-and-go. Seems like no matter how much I read, the more I discovered I didn't know.
Anyway, thanks for all the past help and any opinions anyone might decide to offer on this post.
steve campbell
I've discovered another situation. This may not be a problem, but I've got to deal with it at any rate.
I find that some users have a .mailboxlist which points to folders in their home directory, and have folders in their mail directory as well. For the most part, this situation involved horde/imp "sent-mail" folders which are created when users send mail through our webmail but they more than likely have a client on either their phone or desktop that is configured as imap. The horde/imp "sent-mail" is not listed in their .mailboxlist file. So I'm guessing this will be all right to leave as is or to modify the resultant .subscription file to point to moved folders.
So many things to consider for so many different situations.
Thanks
steve
On 2012-03-14 10:46 AM, Steve Campbell <campbell@cnpapers.com> wrote:
Over the years, some imap accounts had their folders directly in their home directory and the contents of the .mailboxlist file would have an entry with just the name of the folder in it (Trash, eg), and most had the folders in their ~/mail folder with an entry like "mail/Trash". Our webmail app, Horde/Imp, always seemed to take care of this. If I create the .subscription file for the users during the move to the new server, should I move the folders to the mail directory and amend their .subscriptions file to reflect that change on these odd ball accounts, and will that affect how their client is seeing these?
Yes... dovecot doesn't like it when stuff other than mail is in the home folder:
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/VirtualUsers/Home
--
Best regards,
Charles
On 3/14/2012 1:00 PM, Charles Marcus wrote:
On 2012-03-14 10:46 AM, Steve Campbell <campbell@cnpapers.com> wrote:
Over the years, some imap accounts had their folders directly in their home directory and the contents of the .mailboxlist file would have an entry with just the name of the folder in it (Trash, eg), and most had the folders in their ~/mail folder with an entry like "mail/Trash". Our webmail app, Horde/Imp, always seemed to take care of this. If I create the .subscription file for the users during the move to the new server, should I move the folders to the mail directory and amend their .subscriptions file to reflect that change on these odd ball accounts, and will that affect how their client is seeing these?
Yes... dovecot doesn't like it when stuff other than mail is in the home folder:
I'm not sure these are virtual users, so that link may have confused me.
All accounts on these servers have real unix accounts. Their inbox is
/var/spool/mail/unix-user-name.
Their imap folders, the ones that they create using an imap client or
webmail, are either in ~ or ~/mail. Their original .mailboxlist is
always in ~. Based on that, I should probably copy any imap folders not
in ~/mail to that folder, duplicate ~/.mailboxlist to the file
~/mail/.subscriptions, and amend any .subscriptions file contents to
just have the name of the folders (without any "mail/folder" reference
in it).
My example would then be as follows
/home/steve = folder /home/steve/Drafts = original folder /home/steve/AnyFolder = original folder /home/steve/.mailboxlist = original file /home/steve/mail = folder (either original or created) /home/steve/mail/.subscriptions = copied contents of .mailboxlist file /home/steve/mail/Drafts = copied folder of original /home/steve/mail/AnyFolder = copied folder of original
Contents of original .mailboxlist and new .subscriptions:
Drafts AnyFolder
If the imap folders were in ~/mail, then the original .mailboxlist would have been
mail/Drafts mail/AnyFolder
but after the corrections to the .subscriptions file, they would be as above (without reference to the mail folder).
Is this correct?
thanks for the help
steve
On 2012-03-14 3:53 PM, Steve Campbell <campbell@cnpapers.com> wrote:
I'm not sure these are virtual users, so that link may have confused me. All accounts on these servers have real unix accounts. Their inbox is /var/spool/mail/unix-user-name.
Doesn't matter, the same thing applies... don't put mail directly in their 'home' folder, put it in a subfolder (ie, /home/user/mail)...
You *will* have problems if you leave those as they are...
--
Best regards,
Charles
On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 10:46 -0400, Steve Campbell wrote:
I've mostly finished a conversion from an old Centos 3 UW-Imap server to a new Centos 6 dovecot server.
This is messy stuff to do. There are ways you could make Dovecot behave identically to UW-IMAP (mail_full_filesystem_access=yes), but for future and for security it's better if you don't do that.
I did not copy the old ~/.mailboxlist file to ~/mail/.subscriptions file, but notice some users have the latter file now. These are all mbox folders on the old and new server.
Copying it for users who haven't already readded their subscriptions would be a good idea.
Over the years, some imap accounts had their folders directly in their home directory and the contents of the .mailboxlist file would have an entry with just the name of the folder in it (Trash, eg), and most had the folders in their ~/mail folder with an entry like "mail/Trash". Our webmail app, Horde/Imp, always seemed to take care of this. If I create the .subscription file for the users during the move to the new server, should I move the folders to the mail directory and amend their .subscriptions file to reflect that change on these odd ball accounts, and will that affect how their client is seeing these?
Yes, move all of the mboxes to mail/ directory. With the compatibility namespaces it should work so that clients don't notice changes:
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces -> Backwards Compatibility
There are also a few old mailing list threads detailing all kinds of issues and solutions related to UW-IMAP -> Dovecot migration..
On 3/15/2012 6:29 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 10:46 -0400, Steve Campbell wrote:
I've mostly finished a conversion from an old Centos 3 UW-Imap server to a new Centos 6 dovecot server. This is messy stuff to do. There are ways you could make Dovecot behave identically to UW-IMAP (mail_full_filesystem_access=yes), but for future and for security it's better if you don't do that.
I did not copy the old ~/.mailboxlist file to ~/mail/.subscriptions file, but notice some users have the latter file now. These are all mbox folders on the old and new server. Copying it for users who haven't already readded their subscriptions would be a good idea.
Over the years, some imap accounts had their folders directly in their home directory and the contents of the .mailboxlist file would have an entry with just the name of the folder in it (Trash, eg), and most had the folders in their ~/mail folder with an entry like "mail/Trash". Our webmail app, Horde/Imp, always seemed to take care of this. If I create the .subscription file for the users during the move to the new server, should I move the folders to the mail directory and amend their .subscriptions file to reflect that change on these odd ball accounts, and will that affect how their client is seeing these? Yes, move all of the mboxes to mail/ directory. With the compatibility namespaces it should work so that clients don't notice changes:
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces -> Backwards Compatibility
There are also a few old mailing list threads detailing all kinds of issues and solutions related to UW-IMAP -> Dovecot migration..
I'd replied to an earlier thread, and in it, I'd asked a question about a "blank" prefix namespace and the backward compatability namespaces. I'm not sure whether my "mail_location" takes precedence over namespaces (with or without a "location" parm), especially since I don't define a "blank" prefix defined.
It's been working, or at least I'm not getting calls, so maybe I'm OK. In any event, I believe if I move all of these folders to ~/mail, ensure the .subscriptions file is matching, that at least people using Thunderbird will re-read the file and set their folders properly. Not sure about other clients.
Thanks for the help.
steve
participants (3)
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Charles Marcus
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Steve Campbell
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Timo Sirainen