thunderbird and .maildir subdirectories

hydraMax · 11-22-2010, 07:28 PM

Hi. I set up my own e-mail server with postfix and courier-imap, mostly for the learning experience, but also to have more control. Before I got courier-imap set up, however, I used just postfix for quite a while, and I would just log into the server directly (over SSH) and use mutt. I set up my procmailrc to forward some of my mail into subdirectories.

However, now that I have IMAP I want to access my mail remotely from Thunderbird. But Thunderbird only shows the inbox, not the subdirectories. Can I just adjust Thunderbird somehow to let me view those? I see some settings under Server Settings >> Advanced, but not sure those should be set in my case. Or do I need to adjust procmailrc so that mail is delivered differently, say, to different kinds of sub-folders that are Thunderbird friendly?

Here is my .maildir structure: (aklug and archive are the subfolders)

Code:

$ tree -L 2 .maildir
.maildir
|-- aklug
|   |-- cur
|   |-- new
|   `-- tmp
|-- archive
|   |-- cur
|   |-- new
|   `-- tmp
|-- courierimapkeywords
|-- courierimapsubscribed
|-- courierimapuiddb
|-- cur
[snip]
|-- invoice
|   |-- cur
|   |-- new
|   `-- tmp
|-- new
`-- tmp

Here's my procmailrc:

Code:

$ strings .procmailrc
# .procmailrc
# routes incoming mail to appropriate mailbox folders
VERBOSE=OFF
MAILDIR=$HOME/.maildir
LOGDIR=$HOME/.procmail-logs
LOGFILE=$LOGDIR/log.`date +%y-%m-%d`
* ^Subject:.*aklug
aklug/new

I would prefer to continue using procmailrc to filter incoming mail, rather than having the mail client do it.

[edit: Or, if this could be done in Gnome's "Evolution" client that would be fine also...]

archtoad6 · 11-23-2010, 06:59 AM

From Maildir:

Quote:

Many mail readers do not support Maildir but do support remote access formats such as IMAP. Since there are several IMAP mail stores that support Maildir, any mail reader that supports IMAP such as Microsoft Outlook, Pine, or Mozilla Thunderbird can be used to access Maildir folders.

Could it be as simple as changing your T'bird config from POP to IMAP? Don't ask me how -- I know the issues, but generally use web interfaces.

jetole · 12-11-2010, 10:29 PM

Click on File -> Subscribe. This allows you to decide which IMAP folders your client will subscribe to and has more to do with IMAP then ThunderBird but my point being, I think by default, ThunderBird just isn't subscribing to your other sub directories.