[Dovecot] A little OT but hopefully still related enough... Maildir Delivered mail naming problems.

[Jesse C. Smillie]

Normally I wouldn't post off topic to a mailing list, but I have posted 
every where else I can think of and haven't had any success yet working 
this out.  I know there has to be a few people here with extensive 
knowledge of how mail works and maybe just a tip in the right direction 
would help me out at this point. 

I have migrated from mbox format to Maildir format in the last week. I 
used the utility mb2md.pl to convert all of our existing emails from one 
system to the next. I then modified my /etc/procmailrc file by putting 
this at the top:
MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/

This way procmail is forced to deliver to the new format as well.

For the most part all of this is working perfectly. Procmail is 
delivering emails to their new proper folder and even extended rules in 
users own ~/.procmailrc are working well once the folder path was 
changed from $MAILDIR/whatever to $MAILDIR/.whatever/. Works great.

I am using Dovecot 1.0.1 to deliver our email through the IMAP protocol 
and with the clients we support (Thunderbird and Outlook) things are 
working very well for us.

So now to my problem. We also use Usermin for our users to access their 
email when they don't have a supported client available to them. When 
users look at their email with Usermin their emails are out of order 
regardless of weather I have Usermin's "Read Mail" module using IMAP to 
get mail or have it read the users Maildir directly. Sorts are just all 
jacked up. Sometimes if users then click the "Date" button to sort by 
date it snaps to; sometimes it don't. I currently have multiple posts on 
the Webmin/Usermin mailing list about this problem and it really seems 
to point back to the naming scheme of our emails now.

All emails which were converted have the classic maildir format. 
UnixTime.PID.Server...
1183737827.002379.mbox:2,RS
1183737827.002388.mbox:2,RS
1183737827.002392.mbox:2,RSa
1183737827.002394.mbox:2,RS

However, all the email that is delivered after the fact is different. 
They all look like this:
_oTH.XqwlGB.gator:2,RS
_p2F.qjVlGB.gator:2,RS
_qQF.2mpjGB.gator:2,Sa
_sK.8mTlGB.gator:2,RSa
_uOG.gCtjGB.gator:2,RS
_uxG.a6lkGB.gator:2,RS
_vnF.n-2lGB.gator:2,
_x9H.llckGB.gator:2,
_z3G.k8klGB.gator:2,S
_z5G.kAilGB.gator:2,RS

I have been searching the net for a few hours and reading various 
documentation here and there and I haven't been able to find anything 
that tells me why my mail is being named this way or how to fix it. I 
can say that my test box which also runs 10.2 slamd also delivers this 
exact same way....  For the most part I'm being told that the reason why 
Usermin's sort is all screwed up (order wise) in IMAP mode is that 
messages are displayed in the order that the IMAP server reports them.  
Like wise in Maildir mode the order which they are read.  I can 
understand why this naming stuff throws everything off at this point. 

What I don't understand is why its doing this.  I mean I'm pretty sure 
there is nothing here out of the ordinary as far as my config.  I have 
searched all over the net the last few days and haven't been able to 
find anything useful. 

So in wrap up sorry for being a little OT and thanks a head of time for 
any info or light anyone can share here.
-Jesse Smillie