[Dovecot] namespaces, shared mailboxes

[Adam McDougall]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 09:21:19PM +0100, Alexander 'Leo' Bergolth wrote:

  On 12/02/2007 08:59 PM, Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:
  > On Sun, 2 Dec 2007, Timo Sirainen wrote:
  >> On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 23:59 +0100, Alexander 'Leo' Bergolth wrote:
  >>> I'd like to provide shared mailboxes with maildir that should appear
  >>> like 'Shared/<mailboxname>' to the clients.
  >>>
  >>> Using the namespace configuration below, everything works fine, exept
  >>> one thing: Mail clients (only tested with Thunderbird) won't allow to
  >>> put mails directly in 'Shared/mailboxname' (the folder it is greyed
  >>> out). You currently have to create subfolders and put the mails in those
  >>> subfolders.
  >> ..
  >>> namespace shared {
  >>>   separator = /
  >>>   # hidden = yes
  >>>   prefix = Shared/spamrep/
  >>>   location =
  >>> maildir:/var/spool/mail/Shared/spamrep:CONTROL=~/Maildir/control/Shared/spamrep:INDEX=~/Mail\
  >>>
  >>> dir/index/Shared/spamrep
  >>
  >> I find it strange that this kind of configuration even appears to
  >> work. :) If you somehow manage to get it working with v1.0, there's a
  >> good chance that it won't work anymore with v1.1.
  >>
  >> So if you want to access "Shared/spamrep" as a mailbox, the prefix must
  >> be Shared/.
  >>
  >> If you wanted users to have different views of what the mailboxes look
  >> like, you could just change the location to be different for different
  >> users. Create symlinks to the visible global mailboxes to those
  >> locations.
  > 
  > Having multiple namespaces setup that way seems reasonable to me.
  > 
  > e.g.
  > /var/spool/mail/Shared/tech/...
  > /var/spool/mail/Shared/financial/...
  > 
  > where 'Shared/tech' would be visible to many, but 'Shared/financial'
  > would be visible only to execs/accountants. And both would show up under
  > a common 'Shared/' prefix to keep them distinct from user folders.
  
  Yes, that's exactly my intention. There should be shared mailboxes for
  departments or other groups of people. People having access to those
  folders should be able to create subfolders but they should not be able
  to add new folders directly under "Shared".
  
I am doing something very similar.  I am using a shell script to deliver 
mail to various folders under a public namespace tree.  I am also using 
dovecot's ACLs because they seem to make permissions smoother than depending
on filesystem permissions, and the granularity on the permissions is much
smaller.  For example, I don't allow users to create new folders in the 
shared tree because the permissions will not be appropriate, and that also
stops mail clients from making thinks like "Junk Mail" or Trash.

  > It sounds like he just wants to be able to SELECT the root of a namespace.
  
  I'd like to be able to deliver e.g. new mail to the technical support
  directly to "Shared/tech/" but if that's not possible, it isn't a big
  problem, I'll just use "Shared/tech/INCOMING".

I haven't quite tried that.  I'm matching a structure from an old mail server
which had #shared/department/interest, and each department may or may not 
have more than one interest with different users having access.  They used
to have an In folder under that, but on dovecot I decided to deliver right
to the interest folder to avoid a visually larger folder tree.