[Dovecot] Shared namespaces - solved

[Mark Lidstone]

Heh heh heh.  Whoops.

I've spent a few hours digging around in the source and nearly posted a kludge of a patch I'd written to give a kind of half-baked attempt at getting group-usable subscriptions files.  Then I came across something in the source........

In the config file, do something like the following:

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

Notice the "CONTROL=" part of the location line.  This tells dovecot where to store "control" files (of which the "subscriptions" file is one).  As you can see I have told it to put the control files in each user's home space.  This means not only are there going to be no permission problems, but each user can have separate subscriptions (because everyone is using their own "subscriptions" file).

Of course I could also have set the CONTROL dir to be something like "/home/public/Maildir/control/%u" so they would all be stored in one place, but I prefer the idea of having it in the user's home folder.

After searching the wiki I don't see the CONTROL option explained anywhere.  Is there any chance someone could add that in somehow (a link from the SharedFolders page would be extremely useful also).

Channing - you were very nearly right there.

Many thanks everyone,

Mark Lidstone
IT Administrator

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-----Original Message-----
From: dovecot-bounces at dovecot.org [mailto:dovecot-bounces at dovecot.org]On
Behalf Of Mark Lidstone
Sent: 22 March 2006 08:50
To: Curtis Maloney
Cc: dovecot at dovecot.org
Subject: RE: [Dovecot] Shared namespaces


Hi Curtis,

Aye, I have read the wiki.  I was pretty surprised this wasn't covered to be honest.

Well, I've tried playing with the umask setting (thanks for the suggestion Channing) and changing the index locations (thanks Curtis), but no joy.

I'm just about to start digging into the source to see if it's something I can sort out myself.

Many thanks everyone,

Mark Lidstone

-----Original Message-----
From: dovecot-bounces at dovecot.org [mailto:dovecot-bounces at dovecot.org]On
Behalf Of Curtis Maloney
Sent: 19 March 2006 22:51
To: Mark Lidstone
Cc: dovecot at dovecot.org
Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Shared namespaces


Mark Lidstone wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> 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.

Just a thought, but have you tried setting the INDEX location in the 
default_mail_env ?  I'm not certain, but I believe the subscriptions file is 
included in the INDEX set, and by setting its location elsewhere, you would 
prevent it from being inside the Maildir.  This would prevent ownership 
hijacking, AND let everyone have their own subscriptions.

I'm not certain of this, so either someone else can fill in the details, or you 
could check the source (and please report your findings:)

> 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.

Of course, I'm assuming you've read the Wiki (it looks like you have...)

--
Curtis Maloney
cmaloney at cardgate.net


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