Thanks Bill,

I thought I'd gotten that. I guess, not enough sleep.

So now, when attempting to connect, I'm getting this in the log (and hurray, I'm now getting far enough to at least have something in the log):

dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:41 Error: IMAP(benfell): Namespace 'folders/' mail storage creation failed with mail location: /home/benfell/imap-folders dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:41 Error: child 7412 (imap) returned error 89 dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:50 Info: auth(default): new auth connection: pid=7413 dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): client in: AUTH
1 PLAIN service=IMAP secured lip=216.240.40.179
rip=134.154.208.37 resp=AGJlbmZlbGwAVjNvNXk3ZTl1M3I4 dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): pam(benfell,134.154.208.37): lookup service=dovecot dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): client out: OK
1 user=benfell dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): master in: REQUEST
2 7408 1 dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): passwd(benfell,134.154.208.37): lookup dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: auth(default): master out: USER
2 benfell system_user=benfell uid=1000 gid=1000
home=/home/benfell dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Error: IMAP(benfell): Ambiguous mail location setting, don't know what to do with it: /home/benfell/imap-folders (try prefixing it with mbox: or maildir:) dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Error: IMAP(benfell): Namespace 'folders/' mail storage creation failed with mail location: /home/benfell/imap-folders dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Info: imap-login: Login: user=<benfell>, method=PLAIN, rip=134.154.208.37, lip=216.240.40.179, TLS dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Error: child 7415 (imap) returned error 89

What I really want to do here is to use an already existing, and rather elaborate, set of folders I've been using with mutt for quite a number of years.

But my life has gotten more complicated and I need to be able to access this email along with a number of others, remotely. Evolution seems adequate to the task, as it can deal (quite nicely, it seems) with a (groan) Microsoft Exchange server used at my university.

When I first got a message like the above, I interpreted it as meaning that dovecot wants to create its own directory structure.

So I told the configuration to use a nonexistent directory. As near as I can tell in my sleep-deprived condition, that made no difference.

So here's the current configuration:

starshine# dovecot -n

1.0.10: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

log_path: /var/log/dovecot.log log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login mail_privileged_group: mail mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir:INBOX=~/failed-to-sort-Maildir:INDEX=%h/imap-folders namespace: type: private separator: / prefix: folders/ location: ~/imap-folders inbox: yes auth default: verbose: yes debug: yes debug_passwords: yes passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd starshine#

Now, what? Thanks!

On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 00:27 -0400, Bill Cole wrote:

At 8:36 PM -0700 4/17/08, David Benfell wrote:

(reduced to the key pieces of information.)

...

dovecot: 2008-04-17 20:24:51 Error: IMAP(benfell): Ambiguous mail location setting, don't know what to do with it: /home/benfell/imap-folders (try prefixing it with mbox: or maildir:)

[...]

...

namespace: type: private separator: / prefix: folders/ location: ~/imap-folders

Apply the clue in the log line to the namespace 'location' parameter.

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Namespaces?highlight=%28location%29

Once again, thanks. I was trying to understand the configuration file and I guess that just didn't work. But I still seemed to be missing something.

I wanted to get it to recognize my existing folders. I created a test folder and saw that in the actual file space, dovecot uses periods to separate layers of the hierarchy, and that the folder name at the top of the hierarchy also begins with a period.

If this is the case, I'm not sure what defining "/" as a separator is for.

So, though I'm not much of script writer, I created a script to go through and set symbolic links to those folders (Maildirs):

#!/usr/bin/zsh

cd ${HOME}/imap

find . -type d | grep -v "\/\."
| grep -v "\/tmp$"
| grep -v "\/cur$"
| grep -v "\/new$" | while read folder do target=$(print "${folder}"|sed 's_/_._'g|sed 's_\.\._._'g) if [[ ! -e "${target}" ]] then ln -s "${folder}" "${target}" ls -al "${target}" fi done

It still didn't appear to work. There are thousands of these folders in a nested hierarchy, because I rotate mail folders by year, month, and--in some cases--day. Thus, not only do I need to get these folders recognized initially, but I have an ongoing automatic process that generates new folders daily, that I want dovecot to also recognize.

So about the time I was just about to fire this off, evolution greyed out. When it came back, I could see that it was going through my folders. I sure hope it doesn't have to go through all *this* every time, because it is taking a while.

-- David Benfell <dbenfell@gmail.com>