folders not visible on copied mail folders

[Mark Foley]

On Tue, 17 Jul 2018 08:06:24 +0200 Steffen Kaiser <skdovecot at inf.h-brs.de> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2018, Mark Foley wrote:
>
> > We had a user quit recently.  Three days ago I copied his entire Maildir folder to another user
> > to that user's Maildir/.JoesEmail.  I changed ownership and made the permission 'chmod -R
> > og-rwx .', just like all the other files/directories of the new owner.  This didn't work to show
> > the new folder.  Today, in his Thunderbird client, I subscribed to the 'JoesEmail' folder.  I
> > restarted dovecot and restarted Thunderbird.
> >
> > In Thunderbird, the 'JoesEmail' folder now shows, but it is empty and shows none of the
> > subordinate mail folders.  I ran 'doveadm index -u newowner JoesEmail' and
> > 'doveadm force-resync -u newowner JoesEmail'.  This didn't help.
> >
> > I did this once before with a previous user who quit and only changed ownership, no
> > subscribing, no doveadm, and that worked.
> >
> > What am I doing wrong?
>
> Your description might be interpreted one way or another, esp. "copied his 
> entire Maildir folder ... to that user's Maildir/.JoesEmail".
>
> Also, it depends on how you have configured mail_location.
>
> If this means that you have:
> Maildir/.JoesEmail/{new,cur,tmp} 
> Maildir/.JoesEmail/.mailbox/{new,cur,tmp} 
> Maildir/.JoesEmail/.mailbox.submailbox/{new,cur,tmp}
> now, that will clash with the standard Maildir format: 
> https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir
>
> You would need to move the subfolders with a leading dot of .JoesEmail 
> into:
> Maildir/.JoesEmail/{new,cur,tmp} 
> Maildir/.JoesEmail.mailbox/{new,cur,tmp} 
> Maildir/.JoesEmail.mailbox.submailbox/{new,cur,tmp}
>
> If you use :LAYOUT=fs to mail_location, .JoesEmail should spell JoesEmail
>
> Subscription is needed only, if the mail client "displays subscribed 
> folders only" or does not "display all folders". The meaning of the 
> setting varies from client to client.
>
> Another way would to keep the other account and share it via ACLs: 
> https://wiki2.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes/Shared
>
> Steffen Kaiser

Steffen, thanks for your reply. I did have the copied folders as shown in your first example. I
changed that to what you show as the remedy. The target user's Maildir folder now has:

drwx------  5 mpress domusers   4096 2017-06-28 20:07 .Deleted\ Messages.Junk/
drwx------  5 mpress domusers   4096 2018-07-16 23:22 .Delta\ Dental/
drwx------ 21 mpress domusers   4096 2018-07-17 16:48 .Dennis\ Email/
drwx------  5 mpress domusers   4096 2018-07-16 23:15 .Dennis\ Email.Deleted\ Items/
drwx------  5 mpress domusers   4096 2018-07-16 23:15 .Dennis\ Email.Deleted\ Items.Sent/
drwx------  5 mpress domusers   4096 2018-07-17 17:02 .Drafts/
drwx------  5 mpress domusers   4096 2018-07-17 16:35 .ESI/

Where '.Dennis Email' is the folder for the old user. I copied the old user's 'Maildir/.Deleted Items'
and 'Maildir/.Deleted Items/Sent' to the target user's 'Maildir/.Dennis Email.Deleted Items'
and 'Maildir/.Deleted Items/Sent, respective. That how I understood what you advised. There are
more such subfolders, but I thought I'd try this one first.

However, still only the "Dennis Email" folder shows in the mail client, empty, no sub-folders
even though "Deleted Items.Sent/cur" has plenty of mail files (1522).

I did try running 'doveadm index -u mpress "Dennis Email"', again; and restarting dovecot and
thunderbird again, but still nothing.

What else can I try?

THX --Mark