Maildir with Postfix/Dovecot/procmail/mutt

[bsdperson]

Ok, I have probably screwed up with the mail on my 7.2-stable.

In main.cf:
home_mailbox = Maildir/

dovecot.conf:
mail_location = maildir:/var/mail/%u/Maildir/

muttrc:
set mbox_type=Maildir
set folder = /var/mail/person/Maildir
set mbox = /var/mail/person/Maildir
set spoolfile = /var/mail/person/Maildir

The problem is that as soon as I send a mail to "person" the /var/mail/person file is created where I suppose it should be a folder containing a Maildir/{cur, new, tmp} structure?

To eliminate one problem I renamed .procmailrc but that might have made it worse?

As you see I'm not really sure of what I'm doing.

[J65nko]

AFAIK Sendmail, which is the default on FreeBSD, does not support the Maildir format natively.It delivers mail to "/var/mail/person" files. So modifying sendmail's "main.cf" won't help you much. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maildir

It has been ages since I used "procmail", but procmail transfers mail from "/var/mail/person/" to whatever you specify.

The big picture is as follows:

• Sendmail is the MTA, which receives mail and stores it in "/var/mail/person" files.
• Procmail is a delivery agent which distributes the mail in these "/var/mail/person" files.
• Dovecot is an IMAP server which allows users to log in to your box and read their mail.

My guess is that you use procmail to distribute the mail in "var/mail/person" files to the
"/var/mail/%u/Maildir" files so Dovecot can serve them via IMAP to your users.

Isn't there a utility or script to create Maildirs?

[bsdperson]

Sendmail? I use Postfix. So basically what I have now is postfix + dovecot + mutt. As far as I understand (which isn't alot) the trick is to teach postfix about maildir and then have dovecot and mutt pick it up from the same place. Any thoughts?

[ohauer]

The creation of mbox / mdir is configured in main.cf with the parameter mail_spool_directory.
To configure mdir a / at the end of the path is required (same as for home_mailbox)

From main.cf
# DELIVERY TO MAILBOX
#
# The home_mailbox parameter specifies the optional pathname of a
# mailbox file relative to a user's home directory. The default
# mailbox file is /var/spool/mail/user or /var/mail/user. Specify
# "Maildir/" for qmail-style delivery (the / is required).
#
#home_mailbox = Mailbox
#home_mailbox = Maildir/

# The mail_spool_directory parameter specifies the directory where
# UNIX-style mailboxes are kept. The default setting depends on the
# system type.
#
mail_spool_directory = /var/mail/ #mdir format
#mail_spool_directory = /var/mail #mbox format