Can't access maildir with dovecot

[Steffen Kaiser]

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On Sun, 25 Oct 2015, Julien Cubizolles wrote:

> Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2015 14:50:19 +0100
> From: Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles at free.fr>
> To: dovecot at dovecot.org
> Subject: Can't access maildir with dovecot
> 
> I'm a total newbie regarding imap servers. I'm trying to set up a
> Offlineimap/dovecot/Gnus system and Gnus complains that it cannot access
> the maildir... Here is my setup, put together by copying stuff from
> around the web without any prior knowledge of these tools...
>
> * Offlineimap is setup to use the $HOME/Maildir-free/, using
>
>  --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>  preauthtunnel = /usr/lib/dovecot/imap -o mail_location=maildir:$HOME/Maildir-free
>  --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
>  in the local maildir part of ~/.offlineimaprc.
>
> * The Maildir-free maildir has been correctly (I think) populated
>  with a single "General" folder.
>
>  /home/wilk/Maildir-free:
>  total used in directory 52 available 5502852
>  drwxrwxr-x   6 wilk wilk  4096 oct.  23 11:10 .
>  drwx------ 240 wilk wilk 20480 oct.  23 15:06 ..
>  drwxrwxr-x   2 wilk wilk  4096 oct.  23 11:09 cur
>  -rw-rw-r--   1 wilk wilk   348 oct.  23 11:10 dovecot.index.log
>  -rw-rw-r--   1 wilk wilk    51 oct.  23 11:10 dovecot-uidlist
>  -rw-rw-r--   1 wilk wilk     8 oct.  23 11:09 dovecot-uidvalidity
>  -r--r--r--   1 wilk wilk     0 oct.  23 11:09 dovecot-uidvalidity.5629f967
>  drwx------   6 wilk wilk  4096 oct.  23 11:16 General

Maildir++ prefixes all Mailboxes with ".", hence it should read: .General

>  -rw-rw-r--   1 wilk wilk     0 oct.  23 11:09 maildirfolder
>  drwxrwxr-x   2 wilk wilk  4096 oct.  23 11:09 new
>  drwxrwxr-x   2 wilk wilk  4096 oct.  23 11:09 tmp
>
>
> * dovecot is not setup to start as a server (no script in /etc/rc*.d/)
>  and I didn't configure anything in any /etc/dovecot/ file (maybe I
>  should have ?)
>
> * Gnus is supposed to access the maildir as an IMAP server through
>  dovecot: I have:
>
>  (nnimap "FreeOffline"
> 	 	(nnimap-stream shell)
> 	 	(nnimap-shell-program "/usr/lib/dovecot/imap -o mail_location=maildir:$HOME/Maildir-free")
>
>  in gnus-secondary-select-methods
>
> * I try to access this maildir as follows
>
> /usr/lib/dovecot/imap -o mail_location=maildir:/home/wilk/Maildir-free/
>
> * PREAUTH [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE IDLE SORT SORT=DISPLAY THREAD=REFERENCES THREAD=REFS THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT MULTIAPPEND URL-PARTIAL CATENATE UNSELECT CHILDREN NAMESPACE UIDPLUS LIST-EXTENDED I18NLEVEL=1 CONDSTORE QRESYNC ESEARCH ESORT SEARCHRES WITHIN CONTEXT=SEARCH LIST-STATUS SPECIAL-USE BINARY MOVE] Logged in as wilk
> * LIST "" *
> * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." INBOX
> * OK List completed.
>
> As you can see, the "General" folder doesn't appear, and there is a
> mention of "INBOX" even though there is no folder under this name (but I
> guess that's a default for any IMAP system). Accordingly, Gnus only
> displays a INBOX folder when browsing the FreeOffline IMAP server, and
> complains that it contains no message.
>
> What's the correct way to setup dovecot? Thanks for your help.
>
> Julien.
>

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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