[Dovecot] viewing a subset of folders in dumb IMAP clients

[Amitai Schlair]

On Jan 31, 2008, at 8:40 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:

> On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 22:51 -0500, Amitai Schlair wrote:
>> My world-weary, clunkier, but seemingly working solution:
>>
>> 1) have the alternate login yield my existing permissions, but a
>> different mail folder and metadata
>>
>> 2) create that mail folder, make its cur/new/tmp symlinks to the real
>> ones, and symlink in the other folders I care about
>>
>> Is this safe?
>
> Yes.
>
>> And is there a more elegant way to do what I want?
>
> Why not symlink the entire maildirs so their metadata is shared as  
> well?

I should've been clearer. That's what I did, except for the top-level  
maildir (so as to avoid getting the whole hierarchy underneath it).  
Like so:

$ ls -la Maildir-iphone
total 1264
drwx------   2 schmonz  users    1024 Jan 31 00:37 .
drwxr-xr-x  27 schmonz  users   15872 Jan 30 21:59 ..
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      17 Jan 30 22:18 .Bills -> ../ 
Maildir/.Bills
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      17 Jan 30 22:19 .Blogs -> ../ 
Maildir/.Blogs
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      18 Jan 30 22:19 .Comics -> ../ 
Maildir/.Comics
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      18 Jan 30 22:14 .Drafts -> ../ 
Maildir/.Drafts
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      20 Jan 30 22:19 .Language -> ../ 
Maildir/.Language
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      18 Jan 30 22:19 .Movies -> ../ 
Maildir/.Movies
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      17 Jan 30 22:19 .Music -> ../ 
Maildir/.Music
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      16 Jan 30 22:19 .News -> ../ 
Maildir/.News
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      21 Jan 30 22:19 .Purchases -> ../ 
Maildir/.Purchases
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      16 Jan 30 22:13 .Sent -> ../ 
Maildir/.Sent
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      18 Jan 30 22:19 .Sports -> ../ 
Maildir/.Sports
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      20 Jan 30 22:19 .Sysadmin -> ../ 
Maildir/.Sysadmin
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      17 Jan 30 22:13 .Trash -> ../ 
Maildir/.Trash
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      14 Jan 30 22:06 cur -> ../Maildir/cur
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users     150 Jan 30 22:12 dovecot-keywords
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users  347373 Jan 30 22:12 dovecot-uidlist
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users   98464 Jan 30 22:12 dovecot.index
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users   81920 Jan 30 22:38 dovecot.index.cache
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users   64400 Jan 31 00:37 dovecot.index.log
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      14 Jan 30 22:06 new -> ../Maildir/new
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users      29 Jan 30 21:59 subscriptions
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      14 Jan 30 22:06 tmp -> ../Maildir/tmp

> Another possibility would be to write a plugin limiting what mailboxes
> LIST shows.

Cool. A project for another day. :-)

Thanks,

- Amitai