On 27.3.2012, at 17.40, Steve Campbell wrote:
> We've got some users who are using Outlook Express version 6. The client
> allows me to specify the root folder, but not a prefix or namespace. I'm
> still struggling with some users on our new server that have crazy imap
> folder layouts, so I've got a few questions.
>
> When I specify the root folder, does that bypass any namespace/prefix
> definitions on the imap server?
Like you noticed, these are pretty much the same things, since most clients
don't understand about namespaces. And Dovecot doesn't "select" a namespace for
clients. They mostly affect mailbox listing.. Like when a client asks Dovecot
to list mailboxes under foo/, then Dovecot checks if a foo/ namespace exists.
> On some clients, like Thunderbird, I have the option of specifying namespace
> OR prefix. How do these differ? I thought that the prefix was the "name" of
> the namespace.
I have no idea how Thunderbird handles them differently.
> It appears that I have to delete and re-create the account on these OE 6
> clients to make the list of folders show properly. Does that sound right?
Not really.
> This all came about because one of these OE 6 users was not able to use their
> imap folders (server errors). Turns out it was one of the users that had
> their folders directly under ~. So I moved them to ~/mail, created a
> .subscriptions file from their .mailboxlist file and tried everything in the
> world to get the folders to list properly. Only after specifying the root
> folder as ~/mail after recreating the account and restarting OE did it show
> properly and the folders remained listed. My default config has this setup as
> the "mail_location" parm, but blanks as the root folder don't seem to work in
> this situation. I'm also wondering where I specify the "list", "hidden" and
> other parms that are usually set in namespace blocks.
..
> mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
> mbox_write_locks = fcntl
> namespace {
> hidden = yes
> inbox = yes
> list = yes
> location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
> prefix =
> separator = /
> type = private
> }
All of your namespaces have hidden=yes. There should be (at least) one with
hidden=no (this prefix= namespace in your case). I guess I'll need to add a
check to have Dovecot fail if there aren't any.
Also it's not necessary to duplicate the "location" setting, since it defaults
to the global mail_location.
> namespace {
> hidden = yes
> list = no
> location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
> prefix = "#mbox/"
> separator = /
> type = private
> }
This namespace is unlikely to be useful to you, unless you actually have some
IMAP client configured to use #mbox/ prefix.
> namespace {
> hidden = yes
> list = yes
> location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
> prefix = ~/mail/
> separator = /
> type = private
> }
This shouldn't have list=yes .. I'm not sure what even happens with it. I guess
if client lists all mailboxes from root you'll get a mailbox named "~", which
has a "mail" child, which has all of your mailboxes duplicated.
