[Dovecot] Shared mboxes

[Stan Hoeppner]

On 3/6/2012 8:28 AM, Steve Campbell wrote:

>> http://wiki.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes
> That's where most of my questions originated, but thanks for the reply.

Steve, all the information you need is behind that link.

> Maybe I'm misunderstanding concepts here 

Very possibly.

> What I've done in the past with the old imap server is to create an
> account (unix account), so the smtp server puts the mbox (what is
> referred to as the INbox) in /var/spool/mail. Users who needed to
> "share" this mailbox would be give the account user name and the
> password for this account and would add an Imap account to their mail
> client. This would sometimes cause locking problems or client corruption
> due to email removals mostly. This is basically a normal, non-shared
> account.

Locking problems with multiple users hitting mbox files is unavoidable.
 The same is true when a single user hits an mbox from multiple client
devices simultaneously--PC, smart phone, tablet, etc.  Which is why you
do not want to use mbox file format for shared mailboxes, but maildir
instead, because each email is a separate file.  Please note, from the
link I provided:

**********************************************************************
Maildir: Per-user \Seen flag

With Maildir a dovecot-shared file controls if the \Seen flags are
shared or private. The file must be created separately inside each
Maildir, although if the file already exists in the Maildir root it's
automatically copied for newly created mailboxes. If dovecot-shared file
doesn't exist in Maildir, the \Seen flags are shared. If it exists, the
\Seen flag state is stored only in the user's index files. By making
each user have their own private index files, you can make the \Seen
flag private for the users.
**********************************************************************


Simple concept above:  each user of the shared mailbox sees "new" mail.
 One user accessing new mail and marking it as read doesn't mark that
message as read for other shared users.  You can not do this with mbox
file format, only maildir.


**********************************************************************
Maildir: Keyword sharing

Make sure you don't try to use per-user CONTROL directory. Otherwise
dovecot-keywords file doesn't get shared and keyword mapping breaks.

Other mailbox formats

Currently you can't have any per-user flags with other mailbox formats
than Maildir.
**********************************************************************


-- 
Stan