Dovecot shared mailboxes (the correct way)
I’ve just implemented shared mailboxes in dovecot (which rocks, btw). It isn’t difficult, but I don’t think it’s very well documented…
The preferred way to do this is with IMAP Namespaces. My natural approach would be to create something like a Maildir tree /srv/mail/shared, and make this the “public” namespace. Then set filesystem permissions on subtrees of that, to define who can see what. Unfortunately, dovecot uses strict Maildir++, and won’t let you create mailboxes inside each other (on the filesystem) /Foo/Bar is stored as a Maildir called .Foo.Bar, so subtrees don’t exist, so this isn’t an option. The up-comming dbox format should allow something like this, but it isn’t usable yet.
My solution was to create multiple namespaces. One for each shared mailbox. Users are given permission to use them via file-system permissions (i.e. group membership), example:
namespace private {
prefix =
separator = /
index = yes
}
# Office inbox, available to receptionists, office managers, and directors:
namespace public {
prefix = office/
separator = /
location = maildir:/srv/mail/office/.Maildir:CONTROL=~/.Maildir/control/office:INDEX=~/.Maildir/index/office
hidden = no
}
# Umask for shared folders
umask = 0007
Setting CONTROL and INDEX mean that dovecot’s metadata is stored in the user’s personal Maildir, so users who don’t have permission to see the shared mailbox don’t get errors.
The permissions of the mailbox should be done as follows:
# chown -R mail.office-mailbox /srv/mail/office
# find /srv/mail/office -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 2770
# find /srv/mail/office -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 660
If you want a common subscription list, you have to manually symlink:
Seems to work well. (at least with thunderbird)
Comments
Thank you! I made shared mailb
Thank you! I made shared mailbox :-D
Can you help me? Sorry for my
Can you help me? Sorry for my english, i'm russian ;-)
I have this situation:
I want migrate server to debian + dovecot
But! How to make the user test@... to send a letter on behalf of the user info@...?
Thank you!
denvist: That's up to your e-m
denvist: That's up to your e-mail client. You can tell it you are sending from any address you want.
Mozilla Thunderbird supports multiple identities quite nicely, if that's what you are looking for.
can you tell me: what is bette
can you tell me: what is better for imap mbox or maildir?
About shared mailbox: "Public
About shared mailbox:
"Public Folders Concepts and Applications with MDaemon 6.0.
Group Inboxes
Customer service organizations often use group inboxes to receive email requests. Everyone in the customer service group has read and write access to the collective incoming mailbox. In this manner, anyone in the group can respond to each incoming email."
Can i made this in dovecot?
denvist: Yes. maildir is prob
denvist: Yes.
maildir is probably better, unless you are likely to run short of inodes.
sorry, but maybe you can help
sorry, but maybe you can help me?
i can made shared mailbox, everything work perfect! But how create group inbox? I can't understand =(
This works
Your (correct way) of configuring shared folders work just fine after about a week of trials with dovecot, thanks to you I managed to make them behave normal, at last!
I wanted something else, dovecot + maildir + vpopmail + mysql and many users.
All of them need to access one shared namespace in which I've linked the maildirs of some _special_ users. For example office@domain.com is a vpopmail user office@domain.com with a normal maildir like all users (/var/vpopmail/domains/domain.com/office). In /var/vpopmail/domains/domain.com/shared (a simple directory) I've linked /var/vpopmail/domains/domain.com/office/.maildir into ./office.
When I create a user in vpopmail, even since first login (Thunderbird or Outlook) this user can see his inbox and at the same level the namespace "shared" with a subdirectory called "office". Everything received by office is shared between users and they can subscribe to this and can see mail received for office.
I've also played with general ACL in dovecot and managed to limit user accesses into the shared folder so that they have no right to modify any e-mail, delete or insert new. Of course some users can do that with the correct rights.
Anyway this is my THANK YOU message. So thank you very much for this post!
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