Hi Mike,
I haven't seen your messages come through the feed so something is not
working for your e-mail address there?
No I am not using Sieve - the server has a third party handling spam etc
so the Linux box is very basic SendMail, Dovecot and RoundCube setup
(along with my own procmail based web interface for e-mail forwarding
and away message responses).
I struggle on.
On 09/10/17 12:30, Mike wrote:
Mr. Clark,
I would post this question to the maillist, but for some unknown reason,
it will not post my messages.
Are you currently using Sieve with your mbox setup?
If so, would you be willing to share your configuration of that?
If not, I guess I'll just convert to maildir like you are doing.
I'd be willing to help in any way you feel needed.
Thanks.
Mike Barsalou
Quoting "David.M.Clark" <da...@davrom.com>:
Hi All,
Will start using an "update" tag in my subject just to not cause
confusion (mainly for yours truly).
Pursuant to my victory in finding Maildir and mbox being used if
either exist (and if both still seems to favour Maildir - a mistake my
end: "rmdir -f mail" fixed it), I have found one issue with not
declaring the mailbox location: it won't import your new e-mail from
your Inbox (/var/spool/mail/user in my case). If I run the conversion
script mb2md with a '-m', I get duplicate entries in Outlook's Inbox -
I understand why, just a shame it doesn't sync with what 'isn't'
already there.
So yesterday and today I have done additional testing as the customer
uses RoundCube and mobile devices - so attacking the same Linux server
I have Thunderbird and a couple of Android e-mail clients. Outlook is
the only stick in the mud with needing to manually subscribe to
folders when I create them on other devices - again could be me as I
don't use Outlook. (Thunderbird and other e-mail clients, all good
with immediate auto-sync).
I looked at the wiki to try and run both mail_location settings with
the wiki suggested:
##namespace {
## separator = /
## prefix = "#mbox/"
## location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
## inbox = yes
## hidden = yes
## list = no
##}
##namespace {
## separator = /
## prefix = "Maildir/"
## location = maildir:~/Maildir
## list = yes
##}
in 10-mail.conf but as you can see, I have commented it out now as it
introduced some more layers of errors which I have to get back to -
"Duplicate namespace prefix" was one issue.
The goal is to run the server with the existing mbox users blissfully
unaware they are being converted one-by-one so it looks like I 'can'
run both formats but just need to get the configs right. Was hoping
the mb2md would just sync new stuff so I could cron script the Inbox
check for the users that are converted to Maildir until I can throw
the switch and be done with the cut-over..... or I could be dangerous
and remove and import each time.... but that could lead to more dramas
at the user end.
Looks like more R&D is needed so will persevere - annoying to get so
close though, might see if I can just sync in the Inbox items that are
'new' - that means I am ready to roll on the customer site......
On 09/10/17 00:12, David.M.Clark wrote:
Wow excellent feedback Joseph, Philon and Aki,
You have all pointed me in the right direction. Tonight I have tested
Dovecot with just the minor configs I do for Dovecot setup and I have
commented out the mbox/Maildir lines in 10-mail.conf from my testing:
#mail_location =
#mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
#mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
I had run up some test files (folders) under mbox using
"/u/home/user/mail_test" and then renamed this to 'mail' (so
/u/home/user/mail).
Ran some tests with sends/receives, created folders - all good.
Created mbox text folders.
Then had my initial test 'Maildir_test' populated with test folders
which I renamed to /u/home/user/Maildir - and each time I restarted
Outlook it was obeying the folder 'format' based on whether I had
'mail' or 'Maildir' in place.
I did see in the posts and docs on-line somewhere that someone
mentioned the later implementations of Dovecot, without hard-setting
either mbox or Maildir in the 10-mail.conf file, Dovecot, based on
the presence of the particular directory in the user's $HOME
directory obeys the rules based on mbox/Maildir respectively.
I haven't needed to touch the namespace rules as per:
https://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces
so the only files that bear any changes from the installed config in
conf.d are:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14531 Oct 8 23:28 10-mail.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2965 Oct 7 08:49 10-master.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1728 Oct 7 08:52 10-ssl.conf
This will make migration so much easier with converting one user at a
time and then getting them to start Outlook and re-sync things again.
This will save a massive job from being just that and can be done in
batches of users to suit time constraints.
I will post here once again to let you all know how I fare but just
proves to me over and over again the power of the Linux e-mail server
with Dovecot for IMAP and being able to keep with the older SendMail
MTA (been working with Sendmail since 1996 so....).
Thank you all so much for taking time to respond.
On 08/10/17 20:32, Aki Tuomi wrote:
You can give mail location and home directory from userdb or passdb.
For userdb, return mail=something:~/something and for home use
home=/path/to/home
For passdb, you can return userdb_mail and userdb_home
Aki
On October 8, 2017 at 1:14 PM Philon <bytesp...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi David,
I somehow remember that there is a way to get the mail_location
from per-user-settings. I had this once when migrating from maildir
to mdbox.
You might want to use Google and the mailing list archives for the
details but in summary it went like this:
- set Dovecot to grab the mail_location from user-settings (I think
we used MySQL db field - or check docs for auto:)
- have login script which converts maildir from setup A to B and
update the user setting
- kick the user once again to apply the setting (I’m not sure about
this)
This then automates the conversion process to happen on next user
login.
Be warned though that today with all the idle phones, probably many
users will re-login after you restart the server. Perhaps the
scripting could handle a timer which randomizes this a little.
Philon
Am 07.10.2017 um 02:22 schrieb David.M.Clark <da...@davrom.com>:
Hi All,
Thanks to MJ for the suggestion as my only hope, and I have tested
this with Outlook 2016 and Thunderbird today - seamless creation
of folders.
Now the mammoth task of converting customers with masses of mbox
folders to MailDir format using the on-line perl script:
mb2md-3.20.pl
Works nicely and will be what gets us out of trouble. My only
sadness is that Outlook then has to be 're-subscribed' to the
folders again.... which makes sense or maybe I didn't give it long
enough - its IMAP folder syncs are extremely slow compared to
Thunderbird which I also tested in parallel. Thunderbird didn't
need any re-sync, it just found the new subscription setup and was
ready to go. But in all fairness, Outlook is still really only an
Exchange compatible product for the most part.
Would be great to run both mbox and MailDir at the same time so we
can do the slow user-by-user process rather than having them all
down at some point completely - might look at running Dovecot on a
different port maybe with a different ".conf" but thinking this
may not work anyway or cause issues.... back to my server tests to
see :-)
I use additional ports to 143 for external IMAP restrictions
anyway so might be able to do this method somehow.
Anyway, for those interested in where I got to in my testing so
far...
1. Download perl script "mb2md-3.20.pl" from:
http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md
2. Changed Dovecot /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf mbox entry to
MailDir:
#mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
3. Restarted Dovecot
4. su as user and in their home (/u/home/user on my setup):
/u/packages/mb2md-3.20.pl -m
then:
mv mail mail_old
then:
/u/packages/mb2md-3.20.pl -s mail_old -R
then:
Login with Outlook and subscribe to IMAP folders again.
Not a big fan of gazillions of little eml based text mail files in
directories but hey, if it fixes our issues, maybe I need to stop
wambulancing about it all and do as I am told :-)
Hope this helps - will keep this e-mail updated on findings if
anything else comes to light.
--
As always, I remain at your service.
Kindest Regards,
David.M.Clark (Director - Senior Linux/UNIX Consultant)
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--
As always, I remain at your service.
Kindest Regards,
David.M.Clark (Director - Senior Linux/UNIX Consultant)
=--------------------------------------------------------------------------=
Davrom Consulting Pty Ltd Mobile: 0418763124
PO Box 1644, Sunnybank Hills, 4109 E-mail (Work): da...@davrom.com
ABN: 81 096 990 804 E-mail (Priv): dmc1...@dmc1961.id.au
Website: http://davrom.com Skype: dmc1961
Podcast: http://ldup.com.au Google: dmc1...@gmail.com
=--------------------------------------------------------------------------=
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Networking/Internet, E-mail/Web Technologies
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Please note: Any e-mail communication bearing this signature is for
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