10.3: Mail.app and courier-imap mail folders

Nov 21, '03 11:00:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Some users, after upgrading to Panther, reported trouble when working with Mail.app a courier-imap server. As with Jaguar's Mail application, the client supported IMAP subfolders just fine, but somehow the upgrade broke the ability to use IMAP subfolders as a target for "Move a message to.." in the rules. Also, the main 'Inbox' containing subfolders would always appear empty.

The problem is a peculiar issue with the 'mailbox prefix' settings. The courier manual tells us to use 'INBOX,' which does indeed correctly show the subfolders. Unfortunately, courier-imap does not use this prefix for the main inbox, which is what is causing the problems.

The solution is server-side. In your mail directory, you will see sub-folders listed as following:


[user@server ~/Maildir]% ls -l
  2 user    vmail    4096 Nov 14 17:12 .
  3 user    vmail    4096 May  3  2003 ..
  1 user    vmail     393 Nov 10 09:16 courierimapsubscribed
  1 user    vmail    1705 Nov 14 17:12 courierimapuiddb
  1 user    vmail   95922 May  3  2003 courierpop3dsizelist
  2 user    vmail  176128 Nov 14 17:12 cur
  5 user    vmail    4096 Jun 12 12:55 .INBOX.bbedit
  5 user    vmail    4096 Mar 31  2003 .INBOX.bugtraq
  5 user    vmail    4096 Mar 14  2003 .INBOX.bugzilla
So, to keep both courier happy and fool Mail.app into thinking there is a mailbox called "INBOX," all that is needed is a little soft-link or two:
[user@server ~/Maildir]% ln -s . .INBOX
[user@server ~/Maildir]% ln -s . .INBOX.
I've been too lazy to find out which of the two did it, but with these links installed on the server, Panther's Mail.app correctly recognizes the inbox and allows you to use rules to sort to the sub-folders the way it should. Jay!

[robg adds: I trimmed the permission info from the ls output to narrow the display a bit. Since it's not used in the hint, it wasn't really necessary to see.]

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