Public bug reported:
If you start /usr/lib/dovecot/imap from a login shell or say via an ssh
connection, if there is no /var/mail/USER file and the user is using
MAILDIRs, then imap will close the connection with an error:
Error: mail_location: Ambiguous mail location setting, don't know what to
do with it:
/var/mail/geoff (try prefixing it with mbox: or maildir:) imap(geoff):
Fatal: Namespace initialization failed
This is because by default the environmental variable MAIL is set to
/var/mail/USER or in this case /var/mail/geoff. Since there is no
/var/mail/geoff, imap stops looking for the proper mail location. If
there is a zero length /var/mail/USER then imap works just fine, but
/var/mail/USER may not exist.
There a few workarounds such as setting MAIL to "" in the systemwide
/etc/bash.bashrc or in the users .bashrc or possibly setting the
variable in the users /etc/passwd entry, but these all should be
unnecessary. If the user changes from mbox to Maildir then imap should
just "figure this out".
If there is no /var/mail/USER then imap ought to look for ~/Maildir.
** Affects: dovecot (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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imap fails to find proper mail_location
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668088
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