Using courier-imap as a local repository

[Derek Broughton]

Karl Auer wrote:

> On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 09:18 -0400, Todd Slater wrote:
>> You shouldn't have to run courier if you just want to read the mail in
>> your local maildirs. I have maildirs set up and use mutt to read, but
>> you should just be able to create a new account in Evolution and point
>> it to your local maildirs. It'll ask you for mailserver type, just
>> choose local maildir rather than imap.
> 
> Absolutely right! I just told Evolution that it was a local maildir and
> gave it the path, and there was all my mail. Thanks!

Doh.  I answered the question without thinking of the reasoning... :-)
 
> I have no idea why I though Evolution would need a shim server, but
> there ya go.
> 
> On the other hand, the question does still stand - why could the local
> imapd not see the repository? Another poster suggested that the
> pathnames were wrong - I have $MAILDIR, $MAILDIR/folder and
> $MAILDIR/folder/subfolder not $MAILDIR, $MAILDIR.folder and
> $MAILDIR.folder.subfolder. Plausible. On the other hand, Evolution can't
> create a new folder either, which suggests a deeper problem.

You're right.  I guarantee you that courier isn't going to understand
directory trees - folder hierarchies in courier (and dovecot - the only
other IMAP server I know) are divided by . not /.  However, you should
still have access to INBOX (because that's just the cur, new and tmp
folders under $MAILDIR) and be able to create other folders.

The only other thing I can think of is that the Maildir folder should be
owned by $USER.mail (ie, it needs to be group writeable by 'mail'). 
Remember that you don't personally modify any of the files in there, when
they're controlled by an IMAP server - but I thought it should be operating
with your effective uid.
-- 
derek