[Dovecot] Add virtual users to the Dovecot configuration

[Jens E. Madsen Jr.]

Dear Dovecot Mail List,

I have used Dovecot for quite a while to service remote users on my SOHO
network. A local not-for-profit asked about getting their own dedicated
domain name for mail.

I followed: http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_postfix_virtual_hosting to
set up a virtual, but the article leaves out system accounts and I have
not been able to access both system and virtual users at the same time.
I have the following lines:

default_mail_env = maildir:/var/spool/vmail/%d/%n/    which, when
commented out, works for system users
default_mail_env = mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u     which, when
commented out, which works for virtual users

If both are uncommented, only system users work.

Wiki-ing and Googling, I learned that namespace could be applied to the
problem.

Here is the namespace from the configuration file.

#namespace private {
   # Hierarchy separator to use. You should use the same separator for all
   # namespaces or some clients get confused. '/' is usually a good one.
   # The default however depends on the underlying mail storage format.
   #separator =

   # Prefix required to access this namespace. This needs to be
different for
   # all namespaces. For example "Public/".
   #prefix =

   # Physical location of the mailbox. This is in same format as
   # default_mail_env, which is also the default for it.
   #location =

   # There can be only one INBOX, and this setting defines which namespace
   # has it.
   #inbox = yes

   # If namespace is hidden, it's not advertised to clients via NAMESPACE
   # extension or shown in LIST replies. This is mostly useful when
converting
   # from another server with different namespaces which you want to
deprecate
   # but still keep working. For example you can create hidden
namespaces with
   # prefixes "~/mail/", "~%u/mail/" and "mail/".
   #hidden = yes
#}

How do I specify which users use which namespace. Is there a good
description of namespaces and how to use them?

Thanks
Jens