[Dovecot] simultaneous access to folder

[David Lee]

We have for many years been a UW-IMAP site, with users having their own
traditional, private, mbox-format INBOX and folders: almost (but not
quite) no complications of shared or simultaneous access.  We have just
completed a transparent transition to dovecot (official 1.0.0 release).

But we have one residual issue affecting one important user account.

UW-IMAP specifically only allows single access to "mbox" folders.  If
different IMAP connections are attempted to such a folder, the latest
attempt kills off earlier connections.  (That's just the way it works,
which was mostly fine for us.)

On this particular account we had explicitly set two folders to UW-IMAP's
different "mbx" format, so that a group of staff could simultaneously
access that folder and delete messages.  This is by a single, common,
id/pw account.

But dovecot doesn't support "mbx" format.

Is there a way for us to set up such a group-access folder under dovecot?
I've checked wiki pages such as "http://wiki.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes"
but that doesn't seem to be clear on the particular matter of which
formats are suitable for such simultaneous access.  It talks about
different users accessing a folder; in our case it is multiple instances
of the the same user.  Under dovecot, can we simply let it be "mbox"
format?  And can dovecot (unlike UW-IMAP) then handle the simultaneous
access?

[Background: this is just two folders (amongst many) on one username; the
overall service successfully handles over 15,000 usernames.  And the
solution (work-around) will only need to last a few months until that
whole account is Exchange-ified (but let's not digress...!)]

If I've missed something on the wiki which addresses this matter, point me
in the right direction...


-- 

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
:  Senior Systems Programmer                Computer Centre       :
:  UNIX Team Leader                         Durham University     :
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:  http://www.dur.ac.uk/t.d.lee/            Durham DH1 3LE        :
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