Re: [Dovecot] Per user namespace

[Adam McDougall]

Timo Sirainen wrote:

On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 11:13 -0600, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
  
I'm in the process of upgrading an old server which is running 
uw-imap to a new one running Dovecot.  With the old machine, 
unfortunately, my users had the opportunity to store their e-mails in 
various locations.  For example, some have their mail boxes stored in 
~/mail/[various mbox files], others ALSO have a ~/mail/clients/[various 
mbox files] and yet others simply stored them in their ~/ path (thanks 
to the old IMAP).  Is there a way to create per-user namespaces?  I 
don't want to create a "mail/", "mail/clients/", etc., etc. global name 
space that will end up showing up on everyone's mail client, nor do I 
want to individually change each user's setup (and rewrite their 
.subscriptions file).



I think the best solution would be to just finally standardize
everyone's mailboxes under ~/mail/. It'll probably help you in future..

But yeah, it's possible to create per-user namespaces by returning
namespace_* extra fields from your userdb. There isn't existing
documentation how exactly to do that, but basically you'll just have to
return the same namespace_* fields that exist in NAMESPACE_* environment
variables. You can get a dump of those using post-login script, see
http://wiki.dovecot.org/PostLoginScripting. Alternatively you could just
set up those NAMESPACE_* settings directly in the post-login script by
e.g. reading some file from home dir. But don't let users specify
anything, the process is still running as root at that point and they'll
get root privileges by changing just a few environment settings..

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Plugins/Virtual also gives a simple example how
to return a different inbox=yes namespace for different users.
  
It sounds like a similar issue I had to deal with, I ended up making 
several global
name-spaces equivalent to ~, ~/mail, and ~/Mail but I made the last two 
hidden so
legacy client setups will still work but new clients would not 
automatically find
them.  The only drawback I found was client apparently could not see my 
public
folder namespaces unless they used the ~ namespace (blank prefix in the 
client).

Since so few of my users need public folders I was fine with that.

Re: [Dovecot] Per user namespace

[Ashley M. Kirchner]

Timo Sirainen wrote:

I think the best solution would be to just finally standardize
everyone's mailboxes under ~/mail/. It'll probably help you in future..
  

   I'm leaning that way, but at the same time dreading it.


http://wiki.dovecot.org/Plugins/Virtual also gives a simple example how
to return a different inbox=yes namespace for different users.
  
   The good thing is that *everyone's* INBOX lives in /var/spool/mail/ 
(it's actually an NFS mount from the mail spooler).  It's the multiple 
mboxes they've created over the years to sort out (and empty out) their 
INBOX and store in their user space.


   Thanks for the suggestions and pointers!

   AMK4

--
W | It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature.
 +
 Ashley M. Kirchner    .   303.442.6410 x130
 IT Director / SysAdmin / Websmith . 800.441.3873 x130
 Photo Craft Imaging   .  2901 55th Street
 http://www.pcraft.com . .  ..   Boulder, CO 80301, U.S.A. 

Re: [Dovecot] Per user namespace

[Timo Sirainen]

On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 11:13 -0600, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
> I'm in the process of upgrading an old server which is running 
> uw-imap to a new one running Dovecot.  With the old machine, 
> unfortunately, my users had the opportunity to store their e-mails in 
> various locations.  For example, some have their mail boxes stored in 
> ~/mail/[various mbox files], others ALSO have a ~/mail/clients/[various 
> mbox files] and yet others simply stored them in their ~/ path (thanks 
> to the old IMAP).  Is there a way to create per-user namespaces?  I 
> don't want to create a "mail/", "mail/clients/", etc., etc. global name 
> space that will end up showing up on everyone's mail client, nor do I 
> want to individually change each user's setup (and rewrite their 
> .subscriptions file).

I think the best solution would be to just finally standardize
everyone's mailboxes under ~/mail/. It'll probably help you in future..

But yeah, it's possible to create per-user namespaces by returning
namespace_* extra fields from your userdb. There isn't existing
documentation how exactly to do that, but basically you'll just have to
return the same namespace_* fields that exist in NAMESPACE_* environment
variables. You can get a dump of those using post-login script, see
http://wiki.dovecot.org/PostLoginScripting. Alternatively you could just
set up those NAMESPACE_* settings directly in the post-login script by
e.g. reading some file from home dir. But don't let users specify
anything, the process is still running as root at that point and they'll
get root privileges by changing just a few environment settings..

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Plugins/Virtual also gives a simple example how
to return a different inbox=yes namespace for different users.


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[Dovecot] Per user namespace

[Ashley M. Kirchner]

   I'm in the process of upgrading an old server which is running 
uw-imap to a new one running Dovecot.  With the old machine, 
unfortunately, my users had the opportunity to store their e-mails in 
various locations.  For example, some have their mail boxes stored in 
~/mail/[various mbox files], others ALSO have a ~/mail/clients/[various 
mbox files] and yet others simply stored them in their ~/ path (thanks 
to the old IMAP).  Is there a way to create per-user namespaces?  I 
don't want to create a "mail/", "mail/clients/", etc., etc. global name 
space that will end up showing up on everyone's mail client, nor do I 
want to individually change each user's setup (and rewrite their 
.subscriptions file).


   Any solutions here, or am I SOL?

   AMK4

--
W | It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature.
 +
 Ashley M. Kirchner    .   303.442.6410 x130
 IT Director / SysAdmin / Websmith . 800.441.3873 x130
 Photo Craft Imaging   .  2901 55th Street
 http://www.pcraft.com . .  ..   Boulder, CO 80301, U.S.A.