[Dovecot] IMAP separator migration (was: Sharing user folders doesn't work when users have periods in names. )

[ian+dovecot@comtek.co.uk]

On 04/01/2011 09:30, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-01-03 at 15:48 +0000, ian+dovecot at comtek.co.uk wrote:
>> As mailtest 'a LIST "" "Users.*" ' is empty. If I do ' a MYRIGHTS
>> Users.some.user.INBOX ' I get 'NO [NONEXISTENT] Mailbox doesn't exist:
>> Users.some.user.INBOX' and, oddly, a new maildir appears: '* LIST
>> (\Noselect \HasChildren) "." "Users.some" ' -- it also creates an empty
>> folder structure with a single file
>> /var/mail/virtual/users/some/Maildir/dovecot-acl-list too!
>>
>> Is there a workaround that does not involve rebuilding every user's
>> Maildir with backslash as a separator?
> You don't need to rebuild anything on Dovecot's side to change
> separator. Just change it. Clients may become confused about that
> though.
>
> The only other possibility would be to change '.' in usernames to
> something else. Maybe auth_username_translation could help there.
>
> In any case having '.' both in usernames and as hierarchy separator just
> isn't going to work.
Ah, I understand, thanks.

Has anybody got any tips on migrating IMAP separators? Ideally I'd be 
able to migrate users incrementally. Is there a way to specify the 
separator per-user? I can't see a way to do it with a postlogin script 
or userdb.

http://wiki2.dovecot.org/UserDatabase/ExtraFields shows a namespace 
setting, but it seems that the namespace is in version 1.2 format and my 
namespaces look like:

namespace {
    type = private
    separator = .
    prefix =
    inbox = yes
}
namespace {
    type = shared
    separator = .
    prefix = Users.%%n.
    location = 
maildir:/var/mail/virtual/users/%%n/Maildir/:INDEX=~/shared/%%u
    subscriptions = no
    list = children
}
namespace {
    type = public
    separator = .
    prefix = Shared.
    location = maildir:/var/mail/virtual/public:INDEX=~/public
    subscriptions = no
}

Thanks,

Ian

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