[Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Timothy Murphy]

On Fri 21 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:

> It's a very bad idea for a mail client running on the same host as an
> IMAP server to try to access the same mailstore via the filesystem.

I don't know what you mean by "the same mailstore".
KMail on my laptop has a Local account, and an IMAPS account.
The Local account, which I rarely use, accesses messages on the laptop
(such as system messages).
the IMAPS account accesses messages on the desktop.
This seems to me to work perfectly.

> >>  I still think you are missing something about how IMAP works...
> >
> >What exactly?
>
> 1. IMAP is not a file server protocol.

I don't know what this means, so I certainly never assumed it.

> 2. "What KMail does" is not a definition of any standard.

I never suggested it was.
But I use kmail, so what kmail does is of interest to me.

I find KMail works perfectly with dovecot
(I had some problems originally, 
because of the different directory structures.)

> 3. (Only based on your description) KMail does not seem to share much
> with common (albeit poorly standardized) IMAP client behavior.

KMail works perfectly as an IMAPS client, in my experience.

> A mailer shouldn't expect to be able to both work directly with a
> Maildir mailstore through the filesystem and with an IMAP server that
> is accessing the same mailstore.

I don't use KMail on my desktop, except as an experiment,
but when I do there do not appear to be any problems.
My Local folders are kept in directories ~/Mail/Folder1/[cur,new,tmp[/
and are not seen by IMAPS.
My IMAPS folders are kept in directories ~/Maildir/.Folder2/[cur,new,tmp]/
and are not seen my kmail.