MissingMailboxes.txt   [plain text]

Missing mailboxes
=================

Dovecot by default doesn't use any "personal IMAP namespace prefix", which
clients often call either "IMAP namespace" or "IMAP prefix". With Courier you
probably had this set to "INBOX.", with UW-IMAP you might have set it to
"mail/". So, the solution is simply to set this field empty and restart your
IMAP client. If this helps, but you don't want to modify the clients'
configuration, see <Namespaces.txt>.

If it didn't help, you might have <mail_location> [MailLocation.txt] setting
wrong. If it's unset, Dovecot tries to detect where your mail is stored by
looking at '~/Maildir', '~/mail', '/var/spool/mail/' and '/var/mail/'
directories. Depending on what you want, Dovecot might have guessed wrong. See
<TestInstallation.txt> for how to figure out what exactly is the problem.

Missing INBOX
-------------

See if the mails are stored in '~/mbox' file. If '~/mbox' file exists, UW-IMAP
moves mails there from '/var/mail/user'. Currently Dovecot doesn't support this
feature, so you'll have to either move everyone's mails to '~/mbox' and
reconfigure your MDA to store mails there, or alternatively get the '~/mbox'
users to move their mails back to '/var/mail/user'. This feature may be
implemented later to Dovecot, but it's not planned in near future.

It's also possible to symlink the mbox files to the wanted location, but this
breaks dotlocking so it may not be a good idea.

Subscriptions
-------------

Dovecot uses different filenames for list of mailbox subscriptions. You'll need
to rename these to ones that Dovecot wants (currently '.subscriptions' for mbox
and 'subscriptions' for Maildir). See <Migration.txt> for more information.

Troubleshooting
---------------

If it's still not working, check first if the problem is with IMAP client or
server configuration. Easiest way to do this is to talk IMAP directly. (include
the A, B, C):

---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------
telnet imap.example.org 143
A login username password
B list "" *
C logout
---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you see a list of expected mailboxes, the problem is with your IMAP client.
If not, set 'mail_debug=yes' and look at the logs.

(This file was created from the wiki on 2011-11-16 14:09)