Contents 1. Public Mailboxes 1. Maildir: Per-user \Seen flag 1. Maildir: Keyword sharing 2. Other mailbox formats: Per-user flags 3. Subscriptions 4. Read-only mailboxes 1. Read-only mboxes 2. Read-only Maildirs 5. Example: Public mailboxes with ACLs Public Mailboxes ================ Public mailboxes are typically mailboxes that are visible to all users or to large user groups. They are created by defining a public namespace, under which all the shared mailboxes are. See for issues related to filesystem permissions. See for details of how namespaces are configured. For example to create a public Maildir mailboxes, use: ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- # User's private mail location mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir # When creating any namespaces, you must also have a private namespace: namespace { type = private separator = / prefix = #location defaults to mail_location. inbox = yes } namespace { type = public separator = / prefix = Public/ location = maildir:/var/mail/public subscriptions = no } ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the above example, you would then create Maildir mailboxes under the '/var/mail/public/' directory. For example: ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- # ls -la /var/mail/public/ drwxr-s--- 1 root mail 0 2007-03-19 03:12 . drwxrws--- 1 root mail 0 2007-03-19 03:12 .lkml drwxrws--- 1 root mail 0 2007-03-19 03:12 .bugtraq -rw-rw---- 1 root mail 0 2007-03-19 03:12 dovecot-shared ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note that there are no 'cur/', 'new/' or 'tmp/' directories directly under the '/var/mail/public/', because the Public/ namespace isn't a mailbox itself. (If you create them manually, it does become a selectable mailbox.) The 'dovecot-shared' file isn't directly used for either lkml or bugtraq mailboxes, but if you create a new public mailbox via Dovecot it's automatically copied there. Maildir: Per-user \Seen flag ---------------------------- With Maildir a 'dovecot-shared' file controls if the \Seen flags are shared or private. The file must be created separately inside each Maildir, although if the file already exists in the Maildir root it's automatically copied for newly created mailboxes. If 'dovecot-shared' file doesn't exist in Maildir, the \Seen flags are shared. If it exists, the \Seen flag state is stored only in the user's index files. By making each user have their own private index files, you can make the \Seen flag private for the users. For example: ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- namespace { type = public separator = / prefix = Public/ location = maildir:/var/mail/public:INDEX=~/Maildir/public subscriptions = no } ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now when accessing e.g. "Public/lkml" mailbox, Dovecot keeps its index files in '~/Maildir/public/lkml/' directory. If it ever gets deleted, the \Seen flags are lost. If you want to change what flags are shared when 'dovecot-shared' file exists, currently you'll have to modify the source code:'src/lib-storage/index/maildir/maildir-storage.c' maildir_open() has 'mbox->ibox.box.private_flags_mask = MAIL_SEEN;' Change the 'MAIL_SEEN' to any flag combination you want. See 'src/lib-mail/mail-types.h' for list of valid flags. Maildir: Keyword sharing ------------------------ Make sure you don't try to use per-user CONTROL directory. Otherwise 'dovecot-keywords' file doesn't get shared and keyword mapping breaks. Other mailbox formats: Per-user flags ------------------------------------- Currently you can't have any per-user flags with other mailbox formats than Maildir. Subscriptions ------------- Typically you want each user to have control over their own subscriptions for mailboxes in public namespaces. This is why you should set 'subscriptions=no' to the namespace. Dovecot will then use the parent namespace's subscriptions file. Note that this practically means you must have a namespace with empty prefix, otherwise there is no "parent namespace". Read-only mailboxes ------------------- Read-only mboxes ---------------- If you have a read-only directory structure containing mbox files, you'll need to store index files elsewhere: ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- namespace { type = public prefix = Public/ location = mbox:/var/mail/public/:INDEX=/var/indexes/public subscriptions = no } ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the above example all the users would still be sharing the index files, so you might have problems with filesystem permissions. Alternatively you could place the index files under user's home directory. Read-only Maildirs ------------------ If your Maildir is read-only, the control and index files still need to be created somewhere. You can specify the path for these by appending ':CONTROL=:INDEX=' to mail location. The path may point to a directory that is shared among all users, or to a per-user path. Note that if the Maildir has any keywords, the per-user control directory breaks the keywords since there is no 'dovecot-keywords' file. When configuring multiple namespaces, the CONTROL/INDEX path must be different for each namespace. Otherwise if namespaces have identically named mailboxes their control/index directories will conflict and cause all kinds of problems. If you put the control files to a per-user directory, you must also put the index files to a per-user directory, otherwise you'll get errors. It is however possible to use shared control files but per-user index files, assuming you've set up permissions properly. ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- namespace { type = public separator = / prefix = Public/ location = maildir:/var/mail/public:CONTROL=~/Maildir/public:INDEX=~/Maildir/public subscriptions = no } namespace { type = public separator = / prefix = Team/ location = maildir:/var/mail/team:CONTROL=~/Maildir/team:INDEX=~/Maildir/team subscriptions = no } ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- Example: Public mailboxes with ACLs ----------------------------------- See for more information about ACLs. ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- namespace { type = public separator = . prefix = public. location = maildir:/var/mail/public subscriptions = no list = children } plugin { acl = vfile } ---%<------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's important that the namespace type is "public" regardless of whether you set the namespace prefix to "shared." or something else. After this you have to place 'dovecot-acl' files in every mailbox/folder below '/var/mail/public' with rights for that folder (e.g. 'user=someone lr'). 'acl_shared_dict' setting is not relevant for public mailboxes (only for shared). (This file was created from the wiki on 2011-11-16 14:09)