[Dovecot] How to exec /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap with specific maildir location

[Ben Morrow]

At  5PM +0100 on  9/04/13 you (David Woodhouse) wrote:
> Once upon a time I could configure my mailer to access my historical
> archives by running something like
> 
>  ssh $mailserver MAIL=maildir:~/Maildir-archive dovecot --exec-mail imap
> 
> I need to run /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap manually now, and I've fixed
> that a while ago for my normal email access. But I've just had cause to
> go back to my archives for the first time in a while... and realised
> that I don't know how to make it work any more.
> 
> When invoking /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap, is there an environment
> variable or command line option which can set the mail location?

I don't know about an environment variable, but you can use the -o
option to set configuration variables in the dovecot.conf format:

    /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap -o mail_location=maildir:~/Maildir-archive

Ben