[Dovecot] ssh tunneling and maildir

Joel Becker jlbec at evilplan.org
Wed Jul 11 09:31:10 EEST 2007


Hello everyone, please keep my CC'd, I'm not on the list.
	I've been using dovecot happily via an ssh tunnel.  My mutt is
configured to use IMAP, and the tunnel is as follows in my muttrc:

    set tunnel="ssh -q mymailhost 'MBOX_LOCKS=fcntl MAIL=/home/jlbec/mail /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap'"

	It should be pretty obvious that this logs into mymailhost as me
(via SSH keyauth) and runs /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap directly as a
foreground process.  Setting MAIL, it points dovecot imap to my mbox
folders.  dovecot imap speaks imap over stdin/out, this goes over the
ssh to mutt.
	It works great.  Really great.  I don't need root access at all,
the server isn't running dovecot globally, and I get IMAP through
firewalls if I can ssh through a firewall/vpn.  I'm using mbox and
fcntl, so my MTA has no trouble working in concert.
	However, this doesn't appear to be documented anywhere.  A
friend showed it to me, and I don't even remember who that was.
	I'm now considering changing to maildir folders.  I figure
dovecot imap might figure out a folder is maildir when stat says
S_IFDIR, but without documentation, I can't figure out how to tell
dovecot imap to use maildir when I create a folder.  I'm also unsure how
this will interact with my MTA.
	For the latter, I'm thinking I just need to configure my MTA to
use dovecot's deliver program.  For the former, is there some magic
environment variable I need to add to my tunnel command line?

Thanks
Joel

-- 

"The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours
 is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight."
	- Theodore Roosevelt

			http://www.jlbec.org/
			jlbec at evilplan.org


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