Dovecot + Sendmail -- mbox and INBOX

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 02:36 PM

'ello all.

I am trying to get Dovecot to work with my current sendmail setup.

I can check my email via POP and IMAP, but operations fail in regards to IMAP (Trash, and after initial email check, Inbox is gone).

Here is my mail_location in dovecot.conf

Code:

mail_location = mbox:/var/spool/mail:INDEX=/var/indexes/%u

I have been messing with it, adding in INBOX= this and that to no avail.

Sendmail delivers mail to /var/spool/mail/<username>

Here is my Dovecot setup

Code:

# 1.0.7: /etc/dovecot.conf
base_dir: /var/run/dovecot/
log_path: /var/log/dovecot
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot//login
login_executable(default): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
mail_location: mbox:/var/spool/mail:INDEX=/var/indexes/%u
mail_executable(default): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/lib64/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/lib64/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/lib64/dovecot/pop3
auth default:
  passdb:
    driver: pam
  userdb:
    driver: passwd

Can someone please help me set this up correctly?

Here are some of my errors from tinkering:

Code:

dovecot: Nov 06 14:11:04 Error: IMAP(tcrowder): Ambiguous mail location setting, don't know what to do with it: INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u:mbox:/var/spool/mail/tcrowder (try prefixing it with mbox: or maildir:)
dovecot: Nov 06 14:11:04 Error: IMAP(tcrowder): Mail storage creation failed with mail_location: INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u:mbox:/var/spool/mail/tcrowder
dovecot: Nov 06 14:12:40 Error: IMAP(tcrowder): open() failed with subscription file /var/spool/mail/tcrowder/.subscriptions: Not a directory
dovecot: Nov 06 14:12:44 Error: IMAP(tcrowder): mbox root directory can't be a file: /var/spool/mail/tcrowder (http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailLocation/Mbox)
dovecot: Nov 06 14:12:44 Error: IMAP(tcrowder): mkdir_parents(/var/indexes/tcrowder/.imap/INBOX) failed: Permission denied
dovecot: Nov 06 14:12:44 Error: IMAP(tcrowder): stat() failed with mbox file /var/spool/mail/tcrowder/inbox: Not a directory
dovecot: Nov 06 14:14:13 Error: IMAP(tcrowder): mkdir_parents(/var/indexes/tcrowder/.imap/INBOX) failed: Permission denied

TIA!

billymayday · 11-06-2008, 04:05 PM

Does it work if you leave the mail location empty? Dovecot will usually find it itself.

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 06:22 PM

Yes it does.

Where does it store my imap folders now though?

I see it is reading mail from sendmail's mboxes now.

Thanks!

billymayday · 11-06-2008, 06:36 PM

Well unless you are using dovecot to deliver mail, nowhere - sendmail does. Probably under the user though - Postfix uses ~/Maildir for example (I don't use sendmail).

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 07:13 PM

Actually, I still can't select the Trash folder though.

Oddly I can create a test folder and delete it, and see it in the trash in my client. I can even delete it from my client, but I cannot delete messages on my client (thunderbird). It says that my mailbox Trash isn't selectable.

I can't find any documentation on this really.

I don't get anything in teh dovecot log either.

billymayday · 11-06-2008, 07:14 PM

Is that a trash folder on the server or local to thunderbird?

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 07:15 PM

Are you saying Dovecot can be used as an MTA in place of sendmail?

Where can I find information on this?

billymayday · 11-06-2008, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spechal

Are you saying Dovecot can be used as an MTA in place of sendmail?

Where can I find information on this?

No, but the MTA can use dovecot as a delivery agent. Not the same thing.

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 08:21 PM

Good point on the local trash can. It was created when I created the account in Thunderbird.

How can I use Dovecot as you say?

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 08:24 PM

I found http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA

Is this where I should be looking?

billymayday · 11-06-2008, 08:28 PM

To do what? You can let sendmail worry about the delivery.

I don't use mbox (sorry, misread your post #3 given my response in #$ re: maildirs), but I assume a file along the lines of /var/spool/mail/username.trash gets created for the trash folder does it

If so, can you post

ls -l /var/spool/mail

?

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 08:42 PM

Code:

-rw-rw---- 1 postmaster mail       0 Nov  5 21:21 postmaster
-rw------- 1 root       root 7949589 Nov  6 20:36 root
-rw-rw---- 1 tcrowder   mail    2847 Nov  6 19:17 tcrowder

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 08:43 PM

I think I should reconfigure and use maildir

billymayday · 11-06-2008, 08:45 PM

Probably not a bad idea. Search for mbox maildir conversion to find scripts to convert existing mail.

Spechal · 11-06-2008, 08:54 PM

Ok, now I have mail going to my home directory

Code:

drwx------ 2 tcrowder mail 4096 Nov  6 20:46 cur
drwx------ 3 tcrowder mail 4096 Nov  6 20:46 mail
drwx------ 2 tcrowder mail 4096 Nov  6 20:46 new
drwx------ 2 tcrowder mail 4096 Nov  6 20:46 tmp

But it is loading messages out of /var/spool/mail/<user>

I restarted dovecot as well

Sorry, I am kind of new at all of this, I am a programmer

##edit
Also, I recreated my account in thunderbird