[Dovecot] mbox to Maildir conversion

Albert E. Whale aewhale at ABS-CompTech.com
Fri Oct 24 00:29:07 EEST 2008


Neil wrote:
>
> On 23 Oct 2008, at 16:17, Albert E. Whale wrote:
>
>> Neil wrote:
>>>
>>> On 22 Oct 2008, at 23:35, Albert E. Whale wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've been running a mbox solution using UW's IMAP server.  I've run it
>>>> for years.
>>>>
>>>> Now do to heavy message volumes, I've decided to to take the plunge to
>>>> convert to the Maildir format.
>>>>
>>>> I am currently testing a single user, and have successfully converted
>>>> the mail messages from mbox to Maildir format, and now I am setting up
>>>> the procmail tool to place the messages into the correct folder.  I
>>>> have
>>>> been following the http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration/MailFormat
>>>> formula,
>>>> but now have a question.
>>>>
>>>> New Messages are now being placed into the ~user/Maildir/new folder.
>>>> However, when I attempt to retrieve those messages, Dovecot does not
>>>> find them.  Why not?
>>>
>>> How are you attempting to retrieve them?
>>>
>> I am trying to retrieve them using the POP3 section of Thunderbird.
>>
>> Is Maildir an IMAP format?
>
> No, the protocol (IMAP/POP3) is irrelevant.  The important part to
> note (and where I suspect your problem is) is that the folder, as far
> as your client (Thunderbird) is concerned, is "Maildir/", the
> "Maildir/new/" directory is part of Maildir's internal format.
>
> That is to say, you should never be putting "Maildir/(new|cur|tmp)" as
> a mailbox name into a client, just "Maildir/".
>
> -N.
>
I suspected that, but I do not understand why Dovecot is not passing
back the messages. 

As you are probably already aware, Thunderbird does not let you specify
the directory.  In fact the configuration does not permit the selection
of a directory.

Is there a debug setting for Dovecot, so that I can determine if
permissions are not an issue?

-- 
Albert E. Whale, CHS CISA CISSP
Sr. Security, Network, Risk Assessment and Systems Consultant
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