dovecot - Jan 2008 - viewing a subset of folders in dumb IMAP clients

I have several dozen IMAP folders (stored as Maildir++). When I'm on  
the go with my iPhone, I only want to see a few of them.

My naive solution that didn't work:

1) create an alternate login that yields my existing permissions and  
mail folder, but stores its own version of metadata

2) configure the iPhone to use that login

3) subscribe to the folders I want

I test-drove the Dovecot config in a webmail app and it worked  
exactly right, but it turns out the iPhone (running the latest,  
1.1.3) apparently doesn't respect IMAP subscriptions.

My world-weary, clunkier, but seemingly working solution:

1) have the alternate login yield my existing permissions, but a  
different mail folder and metadata

2) create that mail folder, make its cur/new/tmp symlinks to the real  
ones, and symlink in the other folders I care about

Is this safe? And is there a more elegant way to do what I want?

Thanks,

- Amitai

On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 22:51 -0500, Amitai Schlair wrote:
> My world-weary, clunkier, but seemingly working solution:
> 
> 1) have the alternate login yield my existing permissions, but a  
> different mail folder and metadata
> 
> 2) create that mail folder, make its cur/new/tmp symlinks to the real  
> ones, and symlink in the other folders I care about
> 
> Is this safe? 
Yes.
> And is there a more elegant way to do what I want?
Why not symlink the entire maildirs so their metadata is shared as well?

Another possibility would be to write a plugin limiting what mailboxes
LIST shows.
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On Jan 31, 2008, at 8:40 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 22:51 -0500, Amitai Schlair wrote:
>> My world-weary, clunkier, but seemingly working solution:
>>
>> 1) have the alternate login yield my existing permissions, but a
>> different mail folder and metadata
>>
>> 2) create that mail folder, make its cur/new/tmp symlinks to the real
>> ones, and symlink in the other folders I care about
>>
>> Is this safe?
>
> Yes.
>
>> And is there a more elegant way to do what I want?
>
> Why not symlink the entire maildirs so their metadata is shared as  
> well?
I should've been clearer. That's what I did, except for the top-level  
maildir (so as to avoid getting the whole hierarchy underneath it).  
Like so:

$ ls -la Maildir-iphone
total 1264
drwx------   2 schmonz  users    1024 Jan 31 00:37 .
drwxr-xr-x  27 schmonz  users   15872 Jan 30 21:59 ..
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      17 Jan 30 22:18 .Bills -> ../ 
Maildir/.Bills
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      17 Jan 30 22:19 .Blogs -> ../ 
Maildir/.Blogs
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      18 Jan 30 22:19 .Comics -> ../ 
Maildir/.Comics
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      18 Jan 30 22:14 .Drafts -> ../ 
Maildir/.Drafts
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      20 Jan 30 22:19 .Language -> ../ 
Maildir/.Language
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      18 Jan 30 22:19 .Movies -> ../ 
Maildir/.Movies
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      17 Jan 30 22:19 .Music -> ../ 
Maildir/.Music
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      16 Jan 30 22:19 .News -> ../ 
Maildir/.News
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      21 Jan 30 22:19 .Purchases -> ../ 
Maildir/.Purchases
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      16 Jan 30 22:13 .Sent -> ../ 
Maildir/.Sent
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      18 Jan 30 22:19 .Sports -> ../ 
Maildir/.Sports
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      20 Jan 30 22:19 .Sysadmin -> ../ 
Maildir/.Sysadmin
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      17 Jan 30 22:13 .Trash -> ../ 
Maildir/.Trash
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      14 Jan 30 22:06 cur -> ../Maildir/cur
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users     150 Jan 30 22:12 dovecot-keywords
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users  347373 Jan 30 22:12 dovecot-uidlist
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users   98464 Jan 30 22:12 dovecot.index
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users   81920 Jan 30 22:38 dovecot.index.cache
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users   64400 Jan 31 00:37 dovecot.index.log
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      14 Jan 30 22:06 new -> ../Maildir/new
-rw-------   1 schmonz  users      29 Jan 30 21:59 subscriptions
lrwxr-xr-x   1 schmonz  users      14 Jan 30 22:06 tmp -> ../Maildir/tmp
> Another possibility would be to write a plugin limiting what mailboxes
> LIST shows.
Cool. A project for another day. :-)

Thanks,

- Amitai