[BlueOnyx:20655] Re: IMAP subfolders

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Gregg,

> I have a client who has been trying to do subfolders in IMAP.  I searched
> around and found some old questions regarding this subject, but has anything
> been done about this more recent? Is there an easier way to accomplish this
> on BlueOnyx and dovecot?

There are several approaches to this. On a "stock" BlueOnyx and using
any IMAP client (even RoundCube) you can already create subfolders.
Pretty much any client supports this. Just create the folder, subscribe
to it (so that the email client polls this folder, too) and that's all
there is.

> I think from what I read you have to configure dovecot to use something
> other than mbox.  Is that easily accomplished on BlueOnyx without breaking a
> whole bunch of other things?

Yes, that's the other method. As is we're using "mbox" by default.
Means: All emails that arrive at their destination in the users local
mailbox are appended to the file "mbox". Which Dovecot then connects to.
Email clients can still take individual emails and move them into
subfolders. Or a procmail rule can automatically move them into
subfolders. Like the AV-SPAM might do with detected SPAM, which end up
in the folder "caughtspam".

But you can also switch the storage of emails from the "mbox" to
"maildir" storage. In which case separate folders are created and emails
are stored as individual files. These maildir folders aren't IMAP
folders, though.

Dovecot can handle both mbox and maildir format by just changing a line
in the config file.

To come full circle: You don't need to switch to maildir format to use
IMAP folders. That works with both mbox and maildir.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber