[Dovecot] dovecot rpms, .subscriptions file, mbox to maildir

[Saurabh Barve]

Chris Wakelin wrote:
> Saurabh Barve wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am running dovecot 0.99-14 on a Fedora Core 2 machine. I had a few 
>> questions:
>>
>> 1) I wanted to upgrade to the dovecot-1.0 release. However, I am not 
>> sure if that's really required. dovecot-0.99-14 has been running very 
>> well for me for quite some time. Is there a real advantage to 
>> switching to the latest release. The reason I'm asking this is because:
>>    i)  I don't have too many users to server - around 15 only.
> 
> 
> We've got 15,000 or so (mind you, it's a big server!). We're thinking of 
> migrating from UW-IMAP to Dovecot 1.0-stable.
> 
>>    ii) My mail server is a pretty fast machine (~1 GHz, 1 GB RAM)
>>        machine, so hardware isn't too much of an issue.
>>    iii) I like to install software from rpm's. It's not that I can't
>>         install from source, but installing from rpm's makes it much
>>         easier for me. Just a personal preference. The version of
>>         dovecot that I am running was obtained from Dag Wieers web site.
>>         I haven't seen a newer version there. I've googled for rpm's for
>>         newer versions, and they are available, but I don't want to
>>         install it from some third party source that I don't know/trust.
> 
> 
> Me too, at least in Linux (but we're using Solaris). However, if there 
> isn't one, I tend to "roll my own". You get the benifits of package 
> management and you can always share them with others!
> 
>>    iv) I am also planning to support web mail for my users (probably
>>        through Squirrelmail). Are there any advantages/disadvantages to
>>        upgrading dovecot for that?
> 
> 
> Probably not? Squirrelmail and other PHP-based webmail clients will make 
> lots of connections, so you'll be relying on Dovecot's indexes to 
> prevent the server getting clobbered.
> 
>>    v) People use Mozilla Mail, Mail.app, Thunderbird, Outlook, and
>>       Opera. Does the 1.0 version provide better integration with
>>       different mail clients (even though I understand that       
>> sometimes it's a problem with the client implementation).
> 
> 
> There have been a few fixes in 1.0, but if your users are happy with 
> 0.99, it might be better to stick with that.
> 
>> So, are there newer version of dovecot (1.0-stable) available in rpm 
>> formats which are guaranteed to be safe and un-trojaned? And is there 
>> any really good reason why I should upgrade to 1.0-stable?
> 
> 
> For me, it was support for hidden IMAP namespaces (which can be used to 
> hide the migration from UW-IMAP) that decided it. Also it's more likely 
> to get patches. But "if it's not broken, don't fix it!"
> 
>> 2) My second question is about creating the .subscriptions (or 
>> subscriptions in 1.0) file. When I moved people over from using pine 
>> to using a mail client like Evolution/Thunderbird, I had to create 
>> .subscriptions/.mailboxlist file for them so that they could see the 
>> folders that they had created in pine. However, people still sometimes 
>> access e-mail using pine. They then create new folders in pine, which 
>> they are unable to see in their mail client. Is there a way around it? 
>> This occurs especially when people check their mail at the start of 
>> the month, and pine asks about saving/deleting old sent-mail folders, 
>> Trash folders. Is there a way to add these folders automagically to 
>> the .subscriptions file?
> 
> 
> Not without modifying the source code to replace ".subscriptions" with 
> ".mailboxlist". You could have problems with UW-IMAP (and presumably 
> Pine) including the folder prefix for the folders in the file, which 
> Dovecot doesn't.
> 
> Alternatively, an overnight reconciliation script might do?
> 
>>
>> 3) Would I be able to support web mail using mailboxes in mbox format, 
>> as I have them now? Or do I have to go for Maildir format? Since our 
>> university introduced web mail, they have had two sets of folders - 
>> one with capitalization (Sent, Deleted Messages, etc.) and one without 
>> (sent-mail, etc. - these were from our pine days). Is this due to web 
>> mail?
> 
> 
> Mboxes should be fine (at least in 1.0). The important consideration is 
> how long it takes to open a folder, as most webmail clients don't use 
> persistent connections to the server.
> 
> The two sets of folders is just down to using differently-configured 
> clients (including webmail). We have the same problem. I sometimes wish 
> they'd defined "OUTBOX" as a special folder in the IMAP protocol as they 
> did "INBOX"!
> 
>>
>> Also, if I do need to convert from mbox to Maildir, what is the 
>> standard tool for doing that? I saw at least three different 
>> tools/scripts for doing that (mbox2maildir,mb2d,mb2md-2,mb2md.pl, .. 
>> ). Which tool (and from where) should I use to convert mailboxes 
>> without problems?
> 
> 
> I don't know, but would be interested in finding out!
> 
>>
>> Any help is greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> Saurabh.
>> -----
>> sa at atmos.colostate.edu
> 
> 
> Best Wishes,
> Chris
> 
> 

Thanks for the quick comments, Chris. I hope the dovecot-1.0 shows up as 
an rpm soon on the apt/yum repos, so that I can upgrade painlessly. The 
one mail client I've had real problems with is Thunderbird. It doesn't 
like to read the folders inside ~/mail for some reason. Apparently, 
there were quite a few posts on the list in the last couple of months 
suggesting that T'bird implementation might be broken. Mozilla Mail, 
though seems to work without a hitch.

I had another question that I missed in my last post. I was supporting 
Secure-IMAP using dovecot for some time. However, the self-signed 
certificate expires in one month. I understand that there are 
security-issues in letting the certificate last indefinitely. Is there a 
way around this? Or do I just keep regenerating the certificate every month?

Thanks again,
Saurabh.
-----
sa at atmos.colostate.edu