I have a really weird problem. To whit:

I compiled dovecot 0.99.10 on two different systems: a linux-ppc box running Debian, and a Mac OS X Server v. 10.2.8. It compiled fine on both.

The same Maildir's are being served up on both -- the OS X server exports home directories to the clients via NFS.

BUT the OS X box orders mailboxes this way: INBOX Deleted Items Sent Items . . .

And the Debian box orders mailboxes this way: INBOX INBOX/Deleted Items INBOX/Sent Items . . .

The compilation options were the same in both cases. The dovecot.conf files are essentially identical -- the only changes are the names of the SSL certificates and the name of the dovecot user.

What I can't figure out is, why is the ordering of the mailboxes different?

This is the Maildir directory list: [network:/Users/foc/Maildir] root# ls -al /Network/Servers/network.uphamscornercs.net/Users/marlier/Maildir/ total 816 drwxrw---- 22 marlier staff 748 Oct 13 19:52 . drwxr-xr-x 64 marlier staff 2176 Oct 10 14:08 .. drwxrw---- 13 marlier staff 442 Oct 13 19:14 .Deleted Items drwxrwxr-x 9 marlier staff 306 Oct 13 19:14 .Dovecot drwxrw---- 12 marlier staff 408 Oct 8 12:26 .Drafts drwxrw---- 7 marlier staff 238 Oct 13 19:28 .INBOX drwxrw---- 13 marlier staff 442 Sep 16 22:59 .Jen drwxrw---- 13 marlier staff 442 Oct 13 18:30 .Klimas List drwxrw---- 13 marlier staff 442 Oct 13 17:57 .Rachel drwxrw---- 13 marlier staff 442 Oct 13 19:14 .Sent Items drwxrw---- 13 marlier staff 442 Oct 13 19:16 .UCCS -rw-rw---- 1 marlier staff 5 Sep 15 20:58 .customflags -rw-rw---- 1 marlier staff 120 Oct 13 18:16 .subscriptions -rw------- 1 marlier staff 296206 Oct 13 19:40 bincimap-cache -rw------- 1 marlier staff 534 Sep 22 17:45 bincimap-subscribed -rw------- 1 marlier staff 197 Sep 16 21:38 bincimap-subscribed.old -rw------- 1 marlier staff 59 Oct 13 19:40 bincimap-uidvalidity drwx------ 3582 marlier staff 121788 Oct 13 19:36 cur -rw------- 1 marlier staff 96421 Oct 13 19:36 dovecot-uidlist drwx------ 2 marlier staff 68 Oct 13 19:36 new drwxrw--w- 2 marlier staff 68 Sep 15 20:58 recov drwx------ 2 marlier staff 68 Oct 13 19:36 tmp [network:/Users/foc/Maildir] root#

Any thoughts?

(dovecot.conf files is included here, if it's helpful): [network:/Users/foc/Maildir] root# more /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf

Dovecot 1.0 configuration file

Default values are shown after each value, it's not required to uncomment

any of the lines. Exception to this are paths, they're just examples

with real defaults being based on configure options. The paths listed here

are for configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var

--with-ssldir=/etc/ssl

Base directory where to store runtime data.

base_dir = /var/run/dovecot/

Protocols we want to be serving:

imap imaps pop3 pop3s

protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s

IP or host address where to listen in for connections. It's not currently

possible to specify multiple addresses. "*" listens in all IPv4

interfaces.

"[::]" listens in all IPv6 interfaces, but may also listen in all IPv4

interfaces depending on the operating system. You can specify ports with

"host:port".

imap_listen = * pop3_listen = *

IP or host address where to listen in for SSL connections. Defaults

to above non-SSL equilevants if not specified.

#imaps_listen = #pop3s_listen =

Disable SSL/TLS support.

ssl_disable = no

PEM encoded X.509 SSL/TLS certificate and private key. They're opened

before

dropping root privileges, so keep the key file unreadable by anyone but

root. Included doc/mkcert.sh can be used to easily generate self-signed

certificate, just make sure to update the domains in dovecot-openssl.cnf

ssl_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/imapd.pem ssl_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/imapd.pem

SSL parameter file. Master process generates this file for login

processes.

It contains Diffie Hellman and RSA parameters.

ssl_parameters_file = /var/run/dovecot/ssl-parameters.dat

How often to regenerate the SSL parameters file. Generation is quite CPU

intensive operation. The value is in hours, 0 disables regeneration

entirely.

ssl_parameters_regenerate = 0

Disable LOGIN command and all other plaintext authentications unless

SSL/TLS is used (LOGINDISABLED capability)

disable_plaintext_auth = no

Use this logfile instead of syslog(). /dev/stderr can be used if you want

to

use stderr for logging (ONLY /dev/stderr - otherwise it is closed).

log_path = /var/log/mail.log

For informational messages, use this logfile instead of the default

info_log_path = /var/log/mail.log

Prefix for each line written to log file. % codes are in strftime(3)

format. Note the extra space at the end of line.

log_timestamp = %b %d %H:%M:%S dovecot:

Login processes

Directory where authentication process places authentication UNIX sockets

which login needs to be able to connect to. The sockets are created when

running as root, so you don't have to worry about permissions.

login_dir = /var/run/dovecot/login

chroot login process to the login_dir. Only reason not to do this is if

you

wish to run the whole Dovecot without roots.

login_chroot = yes

IMAP login process

login = imap

Executable location.

login_executable = /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login

User to use for the login process. Create a completely new user for this,

and don't use it anywhere else. The user must also belong to a group where

only it has access, it's used to control access for authentication

process. login_user = dovecot

Set max. process size in megabytes. If you don't use

login_process_per_connection you might need to grow this.

login_process_size = 32

Should each login be processed in it's own process (yes), or should one

login process be allowed to process multiple connections (no)? Yes is more

secure, espcially with SSL/TLS enabled. No is faster since there's no need

to create processes all the time.

login_process_per_connection = yes

Number of login processes to create. If login_process_per_user is

yes, this is the number of extra processes waiting for users to log in.

login_processes_count = 5

Maximum number of extra login processes to create. The extra process count

usually stays at login_processes_count, but when multiple users start

logging

in at the same time more extra processes are created. To prevent

fork-bombing

we check only once in a second if new processes should be created - if all

of them are used at the time, we double their amount until limit set by

this

setting is reached. This setting is used only if login_process_per_use is

yes. login_max_processes_count = 128

Maximum number of connections allowed in login state. When this limit is

reached, the oldest connections are dropped. If login_process_per_user

is no, this is a per-process value, so the absolute maximum number of

users

logging in actually login_processes_count * max_logging_users.

login_max_logging_users = 256

POP3 login process

Settings default to same as above, so you don't have to set anything

unless you want to override them.

login = pop3

Exception to above rule being the executable location.

login_executable = /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login

Mail processes

Maximum number of running mail processes. When this limit is reached,

new users aren't allowed to log in.

max_mail_processes = 1024

Show more verbose process titles (in ps). Currently shows user name and

IP address. Useful for seeing who are actually using the IMAP processes

(eg. shared mailboxes or if same uid is used for multiple accounts).

verbose_proctitle = yes

Show protocol level SSL errors.

verbose_ssl = yes

Valid UID range for users, defaults to 500 and above. This is mostly

to make sure that users can't log in as daemons or other system users.

Note that denying root logins is hardcoded to dovecot binary and can't

be done even if first_valid_uid is set to 0.

first_valid_uid = 30 #last_valid_uid = 0

Valid GID range for users, defaults to non-root/wheel. Users having

non-valid GID as primary group ID aren't allowed to log in. If user

belongs to supplementary groups with non-valid GIDs, those groups are

not set.

first_valid_gid = 1 #last_valid_gid = 0

':' separated list of directories under which chrooting is allowed for

mail

processes (ie. /var/mail will allow chrooting to /var/mail/foo/bar too).

This setting doesn't affect login_chroot or auth_chroot variables.

WARNING: Never add directories here which local users can modify, that

may lead to root exploit. Usually this should be done only if you don't

allow shell access for users. See doc/configuration.txt for more

information.

valid_chroot_dirs = /var/mail

Default MAIL environment to use when it's not set. By leaving this empty

dovecot tries to do some automatic detection as described in

doc/mail-storages.txt. There's a few special variables you can use:

%u - username

%n - user part in user@domain, same as %u if there's no domain

%d - domain part in user@domain, empty if user there's no domain

%h - home directory

You can also limit a width of string by giving the number of max.

characters

after the '%' character. For example %1u gives the first character of

username. Some examples:

maildir:/var/mail/%1u/%u/Maildir

mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

mbox:/var/mail/%d/%n/:INDEX=/var/indexes/%d/%n

default_mail_env = maildir:~/Maildir

Space-separated list of fields to cache for all mails. Currently these

fields are allowed followed by a list of commands they speed up:

Envelope - FETCH ENVELOPE and SEARCH FROM, TO, CC, BCC, SUBJECT,

SENTBEFORE, SENTON, SENTSINCE, HEADER MESSAGE-ID,

HEADER IN-REPLY-TO

Body - FETCH BODY

Bodystructure - FETCH BODY, BODYSTRUCTURE

MessagePart - FETCH BODY[1.2.3] (ie. body parts), RFC822.SIZE,

SEARCH SMALLER, LARGER, also speeds up BODY/BODYSTRUCTURE

generation. This is always set with mbox mailboxes, and

also default with Maildir.

Different IMAP clients work in different ways, that's why Dovecot by

default

only caches MessagePart which speeds up most operations. Whenever client

does something where caching could be used, the field is automatically

marked

to be cached later. For example after FETCH BODY the BODY will be cached

for all new messages. Normally you should leave this alone, unless you

know

what most of your IMAP clients are. Caching more fields than needed makes

the index files larger and generate useless I/O.

With maildir there's one extra optimization - if nothing is cached,

indexing

the maildir becomes much faster since it's not opening any of the mail

files.

This could be useful if your IMAP clients access only new mails.

mail_cache_fields = MessagePart Envelope Bodystructure Body

Space-separated list of fields that Dovecot should never set to be cached.

Useful if you want to save disk space at the cost of more I/O when the

fields

needed.

#mail_never_cache_fields =

Workarounds for various client bugs:

oe6-fetch-no-newmail:

Never send EXISTS/RECENT when replying to FETCH command. Outlook

Express

seems to think they are FETCH replies and gives user "Message no

longer

in server" error. Note that OE6 still breaks even with this workaround

if synchronization is set to "Headers Only".

outlook-idle:

Outlook and Outlook Express never abort IDLE command, so if no mail

arrives in half a hour, Dovecot closes the connection. This is still

fine, except Outlook doesn't connect back so you don't see if new mail

arrives.

#client_workarounds =

Dovecot can notify client of new mail in selected mailbox soon after it's

received. This setting specifies the minimum interval in seconds between

new mail notifications to client - internally they may be checked more or

less often. Setting this to 0 disables the checking.

NOTE: Evolution client breaks with this option when it's trying to APPEND.

mailbox_check_interval = 30

Like mailbox_check_interval, but used for IDLE command.

#mailbox_idle_check_interval = 30

Allow full filesystem access to clients. There's no access checks other

than

what the operating system does for the active UID/GID. It works with both

maildir and mboxes, allowing you to prefix mailboxes names with eg. /path/

or ~user/.

mail_full_filesystem_access = no

Maximum allowed length for custom flag name. It's only forced when trying

to create new flags.

mail_max_flag_length = 50

Save mails with CR+LF instead of plain LF. This makes sending those mails

take less CPU, especially with sendfile() syscall with Linux and FreeBSD.

But it also creates a bit more disk I/O which may just make it slower.

mail_save_crlf = no

Use mmap() instead of read() to read mail files. read() seems to be a bit

faster with my Linux/x86 and it's better with NFS, so that's the default.

mail_read_mmaped = no

Copy mail to another folders using hard links. This is much faster than

actually copying the file. This is problematic only if something modifies

the mail in one folder but doesn't want it modified in the others. I don't

know any MUA which would modify mail files directly. IMAP protocol also

requires that the mails don't change, so it would be problematic in any

case.

If you care about performance, enable it.

maildir_copy_with_hardlinks = no

Check if mails' content has been changed by external programs. This slows

down things as extra stat() needs to be called for each file. If changes

are

noticed, the message is treated as a new message, since IMAP protocol

specifies that existing message are immutable.

maildir_check_content_changes = yes

Which locking methods to use for locking mbox. There's three available:

dotlock: Create <mailbox>.lock file. This is the oldest and most NFS-safe

solution. If you want to use /var/mail/ like directory, the

users

will need write access to that directory.

fcntl : Use this if possible. Works with NFS too if lockd is used.

flock : May not exist in all systems. Doesn't work with NFS.

You can use both fcntl and flock too; if you do the order they're declared

with is important to avoid deadlocks if other MTAs/MUAs are using both

fcntl

and flock. Some operating systems don't allow using both of them

simultaneously, eg. BSDs. If dotlock is used, it's always created first.

mbox_locks = fcntl

Should we create dotlock file even when we want only a read-lock? Setting

this to yes hurts the performance when the mailbox is accessed

simultaneously

by multiple processes, but it's needed for reliable reading if no other

locking methods are available.

mbox_read_dotlock = no

Maximum time in seconds to wait for lock (all of them) before aborting.

mbox_lock_timeout = 300

If dotlock exists but the mailbox isn't modified in any way, override the

lock file after this many seconds.

mbox_dotlock_change_timeout = 30

umask to use for mail files and directories

umask = 0077

Drop all privileges before exec()ing the mail process. This is mostly

meant for debugging, otherwise you don't get core dumps. Note that setting

this to yes means that log file is opened as the logged in user, which

might not work. It could also be a small security risk if you use single

UID

for multiple users, as the users could ptrace() each others processes

then. mail_drop_priv_before_exec = no

IMAP process

Executable location

imap_executable = /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap

Set max. process size in megabytes. Most of the memory goes to mmap()ing

files, so it shouldn't harm much even if this limit is set pretty high.

imap_process_size = 256

Support for dynamically loadable modules.

imap_use_modules = no #imap_modules = /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap

POP3 process

Executable location

pop3_executable = /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3

Set max. process size in megabytes. Most of the memory goes to mmap()ing

files, so it shouldn't harm much even if this limit is set pretty high.

pop3_process_size = 256

Support for dynamically loadable modules.

pop3_use_modules = no #pop3_modules = /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3

Authentication processes

You can have multiple processes; each time "auth = xx" is seen, a new

process definition is started. The point of multiple processes is to be

able to set stricter permissions to others. For example, plain/PAM

authentication requires roots, but if you also use digest-md5

authentication

for some users, you can authenticate them without any privileges in a

separate auth process. Just remember that only one auth process is asked

for the password, so you can't have different passwords with different

processes (unless they have different auth methods, and you're ok with

having different password for each method).

Authentication process name.

auth = default

Space separated list of wanted authentication mechanisms:

plain digest-md5 anonymous

auth_mechanisms = plain

Space separated list of realms for SASL authentication mechanisms that

need

them. You can leave it empty if you don't want to support multiple realms.

Many clients simply use the first one listed here, so keep the default

realm

first.

#auth_realms =

Default realm to use if none was specified.

#auth_default_realm =

Where user database is kept:

passwd: /etc/passwd or similiar, using getpwnam()

passwd-file <path>: passwd-like file with specified location

static uid=<uid> gid=<gid> home=<dir template>: static settings

vpopmail: vpopmail library

ldap <config path>: LDAP, see doc/dovecot-ldap.conf

pgsql <config path>: a PostgreSQL database, see doc/dovecot-pgsql.conf

auth_userdb = passwd

auth_userdb = ldap /usr/local/etc/dovecot-ldap.conf

Where password database is kept:

passwd: /etc/passwd or similiar, using getpwnam()

shadow: /etc/shadow or similiar, using getspnam()

pam [<service> | *]: PAM authentication

passwd-file <path>: passwd-like file with specified location

vpopmail: vpopmail authentication

ldap <config path>: LDAP, see doc/dovecot-ldap.conf

pgsql <config path>: a PostgreSQL database, see doc/dovecot-pgsql.conf

auth_passdb = pam dovecot

auth_passdb = ldap /usr/local/etc/dovecot-ldap.conf

Executable location

auth_executable = /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/dovecot-auth

Set max. process size in megabytes.

auth_process_size = 256

User to use for the process. This user needs access to only user and

password databases, nothing else. Only shadow and pam authentication

requires roots, so use something else if possible.

auth_user = root

Directory where to chroot the process. Most authentication backends don't

work if this is set, and there's no point chrooting if auth_user is root.

#auth_chroot =

Number of authentication processes to create

auth_count = 2

List of allowed characters in username. If the user-given username

contains

a character not listed in here, the login automatically fails. This is

just

an extra check to make sure user can't exploit any potential quote

escaping

vulnerabilities with SQL/LDAP databases. If you want to allow all

characters,

set this value to empty.

auth_username_chars = abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890.-_@

Username to use for users logging in with ANONYMOUS SASL mechanism

#auth_anonymous_username = anonymous

More verbose logging. Useful for figuring out why authentication isn't

working.

auth_verbose = yes

digest-md5 authentication process. It requires special MD5 passwords which

/etc/shadow and PAM doesn't support, so we never need roots to handle it.

Note that the passwd-file is opened before chrooting and dropping root

privileges, so it may be 0600-root owned file.

#auth = digest_md5 #auth_methods = digest-md5 #auth_realms = #auth_userdb = passwd-file /etc/passwd.imap #auth_passdb = passwd-file /etc/passwd.imap #auth_user = imapauth #auth_chroot =

if you plan to use only passwd-file, you don't need the two auth

processes,

simply set "auth_methods = plain digest-md5"