Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
Thanks for all the clarifications. To finish up on a point that you didn't fully understand and to make a recommendation for your evaluation, - being more comfortable with the concept of being able to make subfolders of all mailboxes than I am with any folder except INBOX, Not sure I understand this. Right now we can create subfolders of INBOX but not folders at the same level as INBOX. With the ANN we can create folders at the same level of INBOX but not subfolders of INBOX. I am more comfortable with an implementation that allows for the creation of folders and sub folders wherever the admin or user determines is appropriate without regard to whether the folder is named inbox or foo. - preferring that the on-disk structure match the mailstore presentation (and being that I prefer the alternate namespace I can't have this), This is obviously next to impossible when supporting two interchangeable namespaces. True, but I don't think it would be very difficult to support both at the same time if we were willing to make a minor on-disk modification to add a folder called inbox underneath the folder username. It seems to me that if we made INBOX an actual folder on-disk (lower cased of course) rather than a synonym for username all the problems with separate namespaces would go away. All folders created at the top level would appear at the top level including INBOX, and any subfolders of INBOX could be created there. We do have a problem to address with existing implementations. I could see this addressed in one of two ways: 1) Write a simple script that creates a directory called inbox underneath username and moves all entities from within username into inbox 2) Use an imapd.conf flag which controls using either the current code of inbox.foldername=username/foldername, or the new code which says inbox.foldername=username/inbox/foldername. This would of course be down the road because I have no desire to mess with existing installations at this time. However, it does seem to me that if we added a folder named INBOX at the appropriate place and renamed the separator / than we would have simplified the whole operation of the system and supported both namesapce options all at the same time which seems like a very inexpensive modification to make to me. -- Michael --
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
Michael Fair wrote: Thanks for all the clarifications. To finish up on a point that you didn't fully understand and to make a recommendation for your evaluation, - being more comfortable with the concept of being able to make subfolders of all mailboxes than I am with any folder except INBOX, Not sure I understand this. Right now we can create subfolders of INBOX but not folders at the same level as INBOX. With the ANN we can create folders at the same level of INBOX but not subfolders of INBOX. I am more comfortable with an implementation that allows for the creation of folders and sub folders wherever the admin or user determines is appropriate without regard to whether the folder is named inbox or foo. I'm not sure that I see the need for both at the same time, but OK. - preferring that the on-disk structure match the mailstore presentation (and being that I prefer the alternate namespace I can't have this), This is obviously next to impossible when supporting two interchangeable namespaces. True, but I don't think it would be very difficult to support both at the same time if we were willing to make a minor on-disk modification to add a folder called inbox underneath the folder username. It seems to me that if we made INBOX an actual folder on-disk (lower cased of course) rather than a synonym for username all the problems with separate namespaces would go away. All folders created at the top level would appear at the top level including INBOX, and any subfolders of INBOX could be created there. Interesting idea, that would solve the can't create folders under INBOX problem with alt-namespace. Something to think about. Ken -- Kenneth Murchison Oceana Matrix Ltd. Software Engineer 21 Princeton Place 716-662-8973 x26 Orchard Park, NY 14127 --PGP Public Key--http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
--On Friday, July 06, 2001 12:48:13 PM -0400 Ken Murchison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey great! This will let me work around MacOS X's Mail program's stupidity in this regard. Before I set up alt namespace, I couldn't get to any of my folders besides the INBOX! Doesn't anyone read an RFC anymore before they write software? Sheesh. Who? Me or the Mac guys? Are you saying that the server doesn't display them or allow access to them, or that your client can't deal with the namespace/hier-sep change? Mac OS X's Mail is evolved from Mail.app in NeXT/OPENSTEP. I don't remember IMAP being supported in OPENSTEP 4.2, so this is something that Apple added. I am running Cyrus v1.5.19 and Apple's Mail _does_ have problems with it. I can see the entire hierarchy, but can't access anything but INBOX. Other mail clients do not have these troubles with this server, so I can pretty safely say that it's Apple's problem. :-) I would bet that nobody at Apple ever thought that someone would be silly enough to use a . as a separator. hehe They probably got as far as UW and stopped there once things worked with it.
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
I have a different problem with the MacOS X Mail. I cannot view messages in a mailbox that has subfolders. i.e. INBOX. I see my lowest level subfolders fine. Sorry for the ambiguity. The problem lies in the MacOS X Mail client, NOT in cyrus. When you try and select a subfolder, you get an error back that folder/subfolder is not an acceptable mailbox name to the server. Well, of course it's not! :-) alt namespace was required before I could look at anything other than INBOX because, for example, I would get an error saying that it couldn't select INBOX/Sent. Now I can get to all of the first level folders because they can be selected without separator chars, but I anticipate that I will be able to get to all of them with the unix separator patch. But if Apple had been able to read an RFC, none of it would be necessary at all.
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 09:29:44 -0400 From: Ken Murchison [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: Oceana Matrix Ltd. My intent right now is to keep the on-disk structure the same, but CMU _might_ have different ideas. There has been talk about making '/' the default and '.' an option, because it would make the code cleaner and possibly a little faster. But, this may or may not ever happen. I think performance is the only reason to change the on-disk structure. Since we're unlikely to switch to / soon, I have an organizational bias to keep with what we have now. If the code gets simplier and faster switching, we'll evaluate that. But we'll probably stick with this general idea for the near future. Larry
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
My intent right now is to keep the on-disk structure the same, but CMU _might_ have different ideas. There has been talk about making '/' the default and '.' an option, because it would make the code cleaner and possibly a little faster. But, this may or may not ever happen. I think performance is the only reason to change the on-disk structure. Since we're unlikely to switch to / soon, I have an organizational bias to keep with what we have now. If the code gets simplier and faster switching, we'll evaluate that. But we'll probably stick with this general idea for the near future. This is pretty much what I was expecting. I would also imagine that without a good tool migrate several thousands of mailboxes changing the on-disk structure is not really an option. I personally believe that we would see a performance gain by changing the on-disk structure, but believe that can also be delayed till some time down the road. -- Michael --
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 00:40:15 -0400 From: Kevin J. Menard, Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] [...] Hmm . . . This would be fine for me, but maybe someone else would run into a problem with wanting to use '/' in a username (have no clue why). In that case, an entry like usesep: whatever_char_here might be a better idea, although admittedly harder to implement. Yeah, one could imagine this. However, making it more configurable just means that admins can set it to something stupid; IMAP interoperability is bad enough as it is, and we'd rather not deal with people complaining that they set the hier-sep to a and Outlook 95b12 doesn't work. Larry
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
Nick Sayer wrote: I am pleased to announce the availability of a selectable hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP. Up until now, Cyrus used a netnews-style hierarchy, where '.' was used as the hierarchy delimiter -- thus prohibiting '.' from appearing in mailbox names. This release allows a UNIX-style '/' separator to be used in the same fashion that David Fuchs' (and derivative) patches. Hey great! This will let me work around MacOS X's Mail program's stupidity in this regard. Before I set up alt namespace, I couldn't get to any of my folders besides the INBOX! Doesn't anyone read an RFC anymore before they write software? Sheesh. Who? Me or the Mac guys? Are you saying that the server doesn't display them or allow access to them, or that your client can't deal with the namespace/hier-sep change? Do this to see what the server is doing: 1. either telnet to the server and login, or connect with imtest 2. enter: a NAMESPACE 3. enter: b LIST * 4. enter: c LOGOUT This will show you the namespace and all folders that you have access to. If what gets returned is incorrect, please let me know. Otherwise, try refreshing the folder list in your client, or setup a different profile. Ken -- Kenneth Murchison Oceana Matrix Ltd. Software Engineer 21 Princeton Place 716-662-8973 x26 Orchard Park, NY 14127 --PGP Public Key--http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
Nick Sayer wrote: Ken Murchison wrote: Nick Sayer wrote: Hey great! This will let me work around MacOS X's Mail program's stupidity in this regard. Before I set up alt namespace, I couldn't get to any of my folders besides the INBOX! Doesn't anyone read an RFC anymore before they write software? Sheesh. Who? Me or the Mac guys? Sorry for the ambiguity. The problem lies in the MacOS X Mail client, NOT in cyrus. When you try and select a subfolder, you get an error back that folder/subfolder is not an acceptable mailbox name to the server. Well, of course it's not! :-) alt namespace was required before I could look at anything other than INBOX because, for example, I would get an error saying that it couldn't select INBOX/Sent. Now I can get to all of the first level folders because they can be selected without separator chars, but I anticipate that I will be able to get to all of them with the unix separator patch. But if Apple had been able to read an RFC, none of it would be necessary at all. I'm confused. Are/were you running a patched version of Cyrus that created folders with '/' as the separator? My stuff is NOT compatible with anything that actually stores folder names containing '/' in the mailboxes DB (like David Fuchs' patch). The whole premise of my alt-namespace and hier-sep is to not change any of the on-disk files. Ken -- Kenneth Murchison Oceana Matrix Ltd. Software Engineer 21 Princeton Place 716-662-8973 x26 Orchard Park, NY 14127 --PGP Public Key--http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
Ken Murchison wrote: Nick Sayer wrote: Ken Murchison wrote: Nick Sayer wrote: Hey great! This will let me work around MacOS X's Mail program's stupidity in this regard. Before I set up alt namespace, I couldn't get to any of my folders besides the INBOX! Doesn't anyone read an RFC anymore before they write software? Sheesh. Who? Me or the Mac guys? Sorry for the ambiguity. The problem lies in the MacOS X Mail client, NOT in cyrus. When you try and select a subfolder, you get an error back that folder/subfolder is not an acceptable mailbox name to the server. Well, of course it's not! :-) alt namespace was required before I could look at anything other than INBOX because, for example, I would get an error saying that it couldn't select INBOX/Sent. Now I can get to all of the first level folders because they can be selected without separator chars, but I anticipate that I will be able to get to all of them with the unix separator patch. But if Apple had been able to read an RFC, none of it would be necessary at all. I'm confused. Are/were you running a patched version of Cyrus that created folders with '/' as the separator? My stuff is NOT compatible with anything that actually stores folder names containing '/' in the mailboxes DB (like David Fuchs' patch). The whole premise of my alt-namespace and hier-sep is to not change any of the on-disk files. No. It's just cyrus with the namespace patch. MacOS X's mail client is stupid. It tries to do a 10 SELECT INBOX/foo despite the fact that the LSUB/LIST output said INBOX.foo. This behavior is clearly stupid. You're being blinded by an expectation that the client was not written by morons. :-)
Re: [ANN] UNIX hierarchy separator for Cyrus IMAP
Nick Sayer wrote: Ken Murchison wrote: Nick Sayer wrote: Ken Murchison wrote: Nick Sayer wrote: Hey great! This will let me work around MacOS X's Mail program's stupidity in this regard. Before I set up alt namespace, I couldn't get to any of my folders besides the INBOX! Doesn't anyone read an RFC anymore before they write software? Sheesh. Who? Me or the Mac guys? Sorry for the ambiguity. The problem lies in the MacOS X Mail client, NOT in cyrus. When you try and select a subfolder, you get an error back that folder/subfolder is not an acceptable mailbox name to the server. Well, of course it's not! :-) alt namespace was required before I could look at anything other than INBOX because, for example, I would get an error saying that it couldn't select INBOX/Sent. Now I can get to all of the first level folders because they can be selected without separator chars, but I anticipate that I will be able to get to all of them with the unix separator patch. But if Apple had been able to read an RFC, none of it would be necessary at all. I'm confused. Are/were you running a patched version of Cyrus that created folders with '/' as the separator? My stuff is NOT compatible with anything that actually stores folder names containing '/' in the mailboxes DB (like David Fuchs' patch). The whole premise of my alt-namespace and hier-sep is to not change any of the on-disk files. No. It's just cyrus with the namespace patch. MacOS X's mail client is stupid. It tries to do a 10 SELECT INBOX/foo despite the fact that the LSUB/LIST output said INBOX.foo. This behavior is clearly stupid. Ahh! Now I understand. You're being blinded by an expectation that the client was not written by morons. :-) Yes, but now I have seen the black light ;-) -- Kenneth Murchison Oceana Matrix Ltd. Software Engineer 21 Princeton Place 716-662-8973 x26 Orchard Park, NY 14127 --PGP Public Key--http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp
