alright i have a imap/courier server and squirrel mail installed. i can log into squirrelmail fine but the mail does not show up in squirrel mail. the mail is on the server so i believe squirrel mail is looking in the wrong directory for the mail, how do i change the directory that squirrel mail looks in?

Squirrelmail doesn't "look in a directory", it interfaces with your imap server.

Did you run the squirrelmail config? Do a search for conf.pl and run that if you haven't already.

i ran the config and it is set up to use the impa courier settings. any ideas on what to do?

Have you looked at you mail logs?

yes i have no errors. im very positive somewhere somethiing is not pointing to the right directory because the mail is on the server in /var/spool/mail/client

Have you tried accessing you mail through courier-imap with any other clients?

yes. with webmin i can access the mail

I never use webmin. Are you sure webmin is accessing mail via courier imap? can you try evolution, thunderbird or the like?

If webmin does use courier-imap, then there should be some record in the logs.

trying thunderbird now

alright i got thunderbird to work with my server. however it doesnt show that theres mail either.

Sounds like your courier-imap server isn't set up correctly.

Start here http://www.courier-mta.org/

I can't help you a lot more, since I use dovecot

I have to say, a quick look at the docs on their site reminds me why I moved to dovecot.

Is there a config file in /etc for courier?

in /etc there is no config file for courier
does dovecot work nicely with squirrelmail?
the problem with switching to dovecot is that i followed the perfect server for fedora 10 for use with ispconfig 3.
so by switching im not sure if the control panel would support it. do you know of any open source control panels that work with dovecot?
im sure ispconfig 3 would work with dovecot but i am a student just trying to see if i can setup a server that could be a decent web hosting provider and i do not have much experience in linux or advanced computer "techniques" if you will.

Question for you - are you mails in /var/spool/mail/client in mbox or Maildir format? I get the feeling that courier-imap only wouks with Maildir. if you aren't sure, Maildir keeps one file per message whereas mbox has one large file.

Dovecot is fine with squirrelmail - I use it myself. I can't talk about isp3config, but dovecot usually works out of the box without any configuration, and if it does need any, it's pretty obvious what to change in the config

based on the description of maildir and mbox that you just gave me, the mail is in mbox format. im pretty sure it needs to be in maildir. how do i change that?
thanks for taking the time to try and help me out btw

There are two stages. First, you need to make sure that mail is delivered in maildir format. What MTA are you using (sendmail, posrfix, etc.)

Second, you will find various scripts to convert existing mboxes to maildir. Try google for that one.