To give some more points of reference about some of the issues we are discussing, I took a look at dovecot (http://freshmeat.net/projects/dovecot/)
Dovecot supports preauthentication: ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] dovecot-0.99.8.1]$ ./src/imap/imap * PREAUTH [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN LISTEXT LIST-SUBSCRIBED] Logged in as charlieb ... You can create top level (peer of INBOX) folders: 001 create foo 001 OK Create completed. 002 list "" * * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" "INBOX" * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" "sent-mail" * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" "saved-messages" * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked) "/" "foo" 002 OK List completed. You can't create a subfolder of a folder 003 create foo/bar 003 NO Mailbox parent doesn't allow inferior mailboxes. But you can create a subfolder of INBOX 003 create INBOX/foo 003 OK Create completed. You can create a folder heirarchy; 004 create bar/foo 004 OK Create completed. But once a directory is a container for subfolders, it can't be a folder: 005 create bar 005 NO Mailbox exists. 006 select bar 006 NO Mailbox isn't selectable: bar Here's where the mailstore is laid out: [EMAIL PROTECTED] charlieb]$ ls -laR ~/mail /home/charlieb/mail: total 28 drwx------ 5 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:14 . drwx------ 55 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 15:12 .. drwxrwx--- 2 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:02 bar -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 0 Mar 12 18:01 foo drwxrwx--- 3 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:00 .imap drwxrwx--- 2 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:13 INBOX -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 0 Mar 12 18:14 INBOX.foo -rw------- 1 charlieb charlieb 511 Feb 15 2003 saved-messages -rw------- 1 charlieb charlieb 511 Feb 15 2003 sent-mail /home/charlieb/mail/bar: total 8 drwxrwx--- 2 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:02 . drwx------ 5 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:14 .. -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 0 Mar 12 18:02 foo /home/charlieb/mail/.imap: total 12 drwxrwx--- 3 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:00 . drwx------ 5 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:14 .. drwxrwx--- 2 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:00 INBOX /home/charlieb/mail/.imap/INBOX: total 36 drwxrwx--- 2 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:00 . drwxrwx--- 3 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:00 .. -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 5 Mar 12 18:00 .customflags -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 1608 Dec 1 2002 .imap.index -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 10264 Mar 12 18:00 .imap.index.data -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 2576 Mar 12 18:00 .imap.index.log -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 1556 Mar 12 18:00 .imap.index.tree /home/charlieb/mail/INBOX: total 8 drwxrwx--- 2 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:13 . drwx------ 5 charlieb charlieb 4096 Mar 12 18:14 .. -rw-rw---- 1 charlieb charlieb 0 Mar 12 18:13 foo [EMAIL PROTECTED] charlieb]$ The above doesn't match the documentation, which says: We support Courier-compatible Maildir++. INBOX is the ~/Maildir directory, all the other folders named as ".<folder>.<subfolder>.<etc>" under it, any directories not starting with a dot are simply ignored.". I have my doubts about INBOX as well: 001 select inbox * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft) * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)] Flags permitted. * 0 EXISTS * 0 RECENT * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1899586815] UIDs valid * OK [UIDNEXT 1] Predicted next UID 001 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed. 002 logout * BYE Logging out 002 OK Logout completed. [EMAIL PROTECTED] charlieb]$ ls ~/Maildir/cur | wc -l 5826 [EMAIL PROTECTED] charlieb]$ I couldn't find any documentation about how to run dovecot - the INSTALL file only says how to build it. From reading design.txt, it seems that a daemon running as root accepts connections, and spawns multiple communicating processes to service them. These processes do login+SSL, auth and imap respectively. I find it interesting that yet another IMAP server author has created their own network connectivity and authentication infrastructure. The dovecot author has broken things down into pieces, but it looks like those pieces may be tied together in such a way that you need to take the whole package. -- Charlie
