Re: [Nmh-workers] What OS/Architecture Do You Run nmh On?

[Paul Vixie]

Ken Hornstein wrote:
> > the imap service's relationship to its backing store is none of my
> > business as an imap client. as long as invariants are preserved, the
> > precise form of magic, or even what upstream rules might be getting
> > broken, are "all fine by me".
>
> Well, I didn't care that much about what Cyrus IMAPd was doing, I was
> more interested in what Thunderbird was doing (because really, there are
> a couple of possibilities).   ...

as far as i know thunderbird can't speak Maildir. it's using binmail 
format for its local folders. that is, files with From_ separators 
between messages.

> ...  If the answer is, "Hey, we just rename those
> files into the appropate Maildir "cur" directory and it all works out",
> then that's fine; that's easy.  I just wanted to be sure we're doing
> the right thing.

i think, contrary to what you said above, that what the IMAP server is 
doing does matter. however, i meant dovecot, not cyrus -- and i 
apologize for the confusion.

> And ... well, okay, I decided to read the code, at least in the Cyrus
> IMAPd case, and color me confused ... but it sure seems like the
> Cyrus mail spool is NOT using Maildir!

on dovecot (not cyrus, sorry!), my Maildir looks like this:

> $ ls -d1 .* | perl -ne 'print if /^\.\w+\/$/'
> .Archive/
> .Drafts/
> .Junk/
> .Queue/
> .Sent/
> .ToDo/
> .Trash/
> .h/
> .p/
> .t/
> .w/

subfolders have more dots in them. so the imap subfolder "zorch" inside 
the subfolder "spam" inside the subfolder "w" is:

> $ ls -al .w.spam.zorch
> total 39
> drwxrwxr-x    5 vixie  staff     10 Jan 14 21:09 ./
> drwxrwxr-x  160 vixie  staff    176 Feb 15 04:29 ../
> drwxrwxr-x    2 vixie  staff     58 Jan 24  2016 cur/
> -rw-rw-r--    1 vixie  staff     10 Jan 24  2016 dovecot-keywords
> -rw-rw-r--    1 vixie  staff   3395 Oct  8  2015 dovecot-uidlist
> -rw-rw-r--    1 vixie  staff   1816 Aug 13  2017 dovecot.index
> -rw-rw-r--    1 vixie  staff  32300 Dec 16 00:28 dovecot.index.cache
> -rw-rw-r--    1 vixie  staff    624 Jan 14 21:09 dovecot.index.log
> drwxrwxr-x    2 vixie  staff      2 May 10  2015 new/
> drwxrwxr-x    2 vixie  staff      2 Feb  5 23:51 tmp/

so, there are the cur, tmp, and new directories you mentioned earlier. 
every "tmp" and "new" subddirectory i have is empty, so i think the 
answer to your other question is, files migrate to "cur". i don't know 
if the migration happens at refile time or scan time. but it happens.

> $ find .w.spam.zorch/cur -type f | head
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239882.M968023P59623.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239883.M007356P59635.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239883.M000846P59633.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239882.M849429P59588.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239882.M927216P59611.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239882.M958171P59620.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239882.M954796P59619.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239882.M866142P59593.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239882.M883220P59598.family.redbarn.org:2,a
> .w.spam.zorch/cur/1431239882.M987748P59629.family.redbarn.org:2,a

whatever dovecot is doing, it's well behaved compared to other Maildir 
cognizant tools.

> $ find .w.spam.zorch/cur -type f | xargs cat | grep ^Date: | head
> Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:45:54 -0700
> Date: 20 Aug 2002 19:05:53 -0400
> Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 11:37:09 -0700 (PDT)
> Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 10:19:28 -0700
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:17:50 -0700
> Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 12:21:00 -0700
> Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:16:10 -0700
> Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:20:12 -0700
> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:52:45 -0700 (PDT)
> Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 18:27:01 -0700

i am somewhat alarmed that my contribution to melting the ice caps 
supports material this old, but future archeologists will certainly say 
of our era that we were packrats.

> It's completely possible I am getting this wrong; please, corrections are
> welcome.

nope. my fault entirely. dovecot. oops!

--
P Vixie