[Dovecot] Questions still about a uw-imap -> dovecot conversion

[Steve Campbell]

Quoting Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com>:

> 
> Steve Campbell <campbell at cnpapers.com> writes:
> 
> > >     This was piped into a script that Email'd users about the changes
> > >     that was going to happen, what they would expect to see, and a
> > >     FAQ on how to set up a mail client correctly.
> > 
> > Here, I'm not sure what should be done. The users with the secondary 
> > folders that are not in ~/mail can't seem to get the client configured.
> 
> "Great artists steal".  Google around for a good set of instructions
> on how to set up IMAP prefix's for various mail clients, and refer
> your users to that.

This conversion to dovecot has been a real learning experience for me. The old
stuff that came with Centos 3 just worked out of the box. I never realized how
much could be modified. It was always there, I just never needed it.
> 
> I also referred them to our webmail (with the correct mail prefix) as a
> reference to a list of mailboxes they ought to see.  If they don't match,
> then that's a symptom of a bad prefix.

Our web mail, Imp, seems to be doing fine now that all of the mboxes have been
moved to ~/mail.
> 
> > I've tried this and modified the .mailboxlist, but I'm thinking Dovecot 
> > is ignoring this and I'm not sure what it's looking at to determine the 
> > imap folders.
> >
> > >         - .subscription files were moved into the mail folder
> > >         (don't have to edit prefixes since the aliasing
> > >         will take care of that).
> > 
> > And when would these .subscription files be created? The first time the 
> > folders would be accessed, or when? This seems to be part of my fix that 
> > I'm getting lost on.
> 
> Sorry, as Timo intimated, dovecot uses .subscription, which can
> be adjusted back to .mailboxlist, which uw-imapd uses.  You shouldn't
> have to edit it if you set up namespace aliasing.  Just move it from
> the top-level into your user's mail directory during cutover:
> 
>  	(if you use dovecot's default subscription filename)
>  	mv $USER/.mailboxlist $USER/mail/.subscription
> 
> If your IMAP client is still ignoring subscriptions, it usually
> means the client was configured that way.
> 
> > >     - your setup is fairly close to mine, so you may also run into
> > >     the problem of user having mailboxes with group ownership that
> > >     users are not part of (for example, group "mail" for INBOX set
> > >     by your LDA or personal mailboxes with groups the user is no
> > >     longer a member of) *and* with group permission not mode=0.
> > 
> > Sendmail sort of requires the "mail" group, does it not? I'll take a 
> > look and see if all users are part of this or not. A crazy solution 
> > would be in order here?
> 
> I think sendmail works fine if you set your mail spool mode=1777 (like
> /tmp), but have each inbox mode=0600.  This setting will persist.
> 
> It's sendmail LDA mail.local that's the problem: it autocreates new
> inboxes with permissions user:mail/660 and unless the user is in group
> "mail", chaos will ensue.
> 

So far, all things seem OK in this area. No complaints are being forwarded.
> You can maybe do a cron script or some other hack, or better yet,
> use dovecot LDA, which sets up the perms correctly (and keeps indexes
> updated).  A one time "chmod go-rwx" during cutover is all that is
> required then.
> 
> The log entry that points this problem out looks like
> 
>  	dovecot: imap(smith): Error: chown(/dc-cache/smith/.imap/xx, group=6(mail))
> failed: Operation not permitted (egid=5678(goodgroup), group based on
> /home/smith/mail/xx - see http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Errors/ChgrpNoPerm)
>  	dovecot: imap(smith): Error: mkdir(/dc-cache/smith/.imap/xx) failed: Not
> owner
> 
> Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com>

For now, it looks like the only problem I'm seeing is that one user who uses
Outlook Express that has a pop account for one email account and an imap account
for another email account is having problems with the "Sent" folder. When she
sends an email using the imap account, the "Sent" copy goes into the pop
account's sent item folder. When using webmail, the sent copy goes into the
sent-mail file as it's supposed to. I'm guessing for now that that google you
suggested might point me to a fix for that.

Thanks all for all the great help.

Shared accounts are next, so wish me luck.

steve


> 




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