dovecot (+sendmail) fails to get email into thunderbird

[Steffen Kaiser]

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On Wed, 13 Dec 2017, jo land wrote:

> I use 143 Imap to connect which i have tested with telnet and was able to
> login. But if i select the inbox with telnet it returns "0 EXISTS"
>
> like so:
>
> telnet 192.168.1.13 143
> Trying 192.168.1.13...
> Connected to sub.domain.net.
> Escape character is '^]'.

> oper2 select INBOX
> * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
> * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)]
> Flags permitted.
> * 0 EXISTS
> * 0 RECENT
> * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1513093097] UIDs valid
> * OK [UIDNEXT 1] Predicted next UID
> * OK [NOMODSEQ] No permanent modsequences
> oper2 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed.
>
> Mail location set to: /var/mail/

Well, /var/mail typically contains a bunch of mbox files, one per local 
users. They are considered an INBOX for each user.

You have configured this for Dovecot:

https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailLocation/mbox

Each user, that logs in successfully, uses the same files in /var/mail as 
mbox storage. The "INBOX" is empty, because there does not exist 
"/var/mail/inbox", I guess. See 2nd example.

If you see /var/mail/username, you should at least configure 1st example:

# %u is replaced with the username that logs in
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

Note the %u and ~ and make sure, each user has an unique home directory. 
You could replace ~ with some specific user-specific path using %u as 
well.

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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