[Dovecot] Shared namespaces

[Mark Lidstone]

Hi all,

I'm trying to replace the "Public Folders" functionality in Exchange server.  At first I thought it'd be something easily do-able with an IMAP server so I immediately thought of Dovecot.  I setup what I though would work and things started to go a little screwy with subscription settings and the like.

I started off by making a public maildir folder (in /home/public/Maildir) and setting the namespaces up in /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf like this:

	namespace private {
		separator = /
		prefix = INBOX/
		location = maildir:%h/Maildir
		inbox = yes
	}

	namespace public {
		separator = /
		prefix = Public/
		location = maildir:/home/public/Maildir
		inbox = no
		hidden = no
	}

The folder /home/public/Maildir has owner root:users and mode 770, and the file dovecot-shared in there has the same owner and mode 660.

I logged with Thunderbird as user 1 and everything seems to work fine.  However, when I logged in as user 2 I was getting all kinds of errors.  On checking the permissions of /home/public/Maildir/subscriptions it was user1:user1 with mode 600.

So then I thought "well, I'll change it to user1:users 660 and then everyone should be able to change it".  I was very wrong.  Whenever someone changed it, the ownership changed to userx:userx 600.  Even when I tried setting the ownership to root:users and mode to 640, anyone could change it and set it to their own name (thus preventing anyone else from using it).

To be perfectly honest, I'd ideally like to give people separate subscription settings anyway.  I thought about symlinking the folders in, but that makes it a manual process to add new folders to everyone's maildirs.

Can anyone please give me any pointers?

Many thanks,

Mark Lidstone
IT Administrator

BMT Nigel Gee & Associates Ltd
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Shamrock Quay,
William Street,
Southampton
SO14 5QL
UK

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