Subject: Sharing Mailbox

From: "Hisham Al Saad" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 09:25:30 +0300

Hi,

I have an eFax application installed on an NT server which requires an IMAP
server to logon and store its messages to a specified account.
This application makes multiple sessions to the IMAP account. It runs fine
with MS-Exchange mail server, but when I tried
to use UW-IMAP (IMAP4rev1 2000.284) installed on a Solaris 2.6 instead of
the MS-Exchange, it started to give problems when multiple sessions are
established. It works fine only with one session .

I start searching through the documentations and the archives trying to find
a clear way about setting up a shared mailbox to solve the problem. All I
found was a scattered information which confused me more.
I have struggled to use mbxcreat utility but I'm stuck.
Is there a clear and easy step by step documentation on how to enable
UW-IMAP account sharing on a Solaris 2.6 ?

Regards,
Hisham

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 00:31:17 -0700 (PDT)

You need to use a different mailbox format.

This FAQ answer is in the latest (imap-2001) version, and may be of use for
you:

Q: How do I use one of the alternative formats described in the formats.txt
    document?  In particular, I hear that mbx format will give me better
    performance and allow shared access.
A: The rumors about mbx format being preferred are true.  It is faster than
    the traditional UNIX mailbox format and permits shared access.
   However, and this is VERY IMPORTANT, note that using an alternative mailbox
    format is an advanced facility, and only expert users should undertake it.
    If you don't understand any of the following notes, you may not be enough
    of an expert yet, and are probably better off not going this route until
    you are more comfortable with your understanding.
   Some of the formats, including mbx, are only supported by the software
based
    on the c-client library, and are not recognized by other mailbox programs.
    The "vi" editor will corrupt any mbx format mailbox that it encounters.
   Another problem is that the certain formats, including mbx, use advanced
    file access and locking techniques that do NOT work reliably with NFS.
NFS
    is not a real filesystem.  Use IMAP instead of NFS for distributed access.
   Each of the following steps are in escalating order of involvement.  The
    higher the number, the more deeply committed you become:
    (1) The simplest way to create a mbx-format mailbox is to prefer the name
        with "#driver.mbx/" when creating a mailbox through c-client.  For
        example, if you create "#driver.mbx/foo", the mailbox "foo" will be
        created in mbx format.  Only use "#driver.mbx/" when creating the
        mailbox.  At all other times, just use the name ("foo" in this
        example); the software will automatically select the driver for mbx
        whenever that mailbox is accessed without you doing anything else.
    (2) You can use the "mbxcvt" program (one of the imap-utils on
        ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu) to copy an existing mailbox to a new
        mailbox in mbx format.  Read the man page provided with the mbxcvt
        program for details.
    (3) If you create an mbx-format INBOX, by creating "#driver.mbx/INBOX"
        (note that "INBOX" must be all uppercase), then subsequent access to
        INBOX by any c-client based application will use the mbx-format INBOX.
        Any mail delivered to the traditional format mailbox in the spool
        directory (e.g. /var/spool/mail/$USER) will automatically be copied
        into the mbx-format INBOX and the spool directory copy removed.
    (4) You can cause any newly-created mailboxes to be in mbx-format by
        default by changing the definition of CREATEPROTO=unixproto to be
        CREATEPROTO=mbxproto in imap-2001/src/osdep/unix/Makefile, then
        rebuilding the IMAP toolkit (do a "make clean" first).  Do not change
        EMPTYPROTO, since mbx format mailboxes are never a zero-byte file.
        If you use Pine or the imap-utils, you should probably also rebuild
        them with the new IMAP toolkit too.
    (5) You can deliver directly to the mbx-format INBOX by use of the tmail
        or dmail programs in the imap-utils.  tmail is for direct invocation
        from sendmail (or whatever MTA program you use); dmail is for calls
        from procmail.  Both of these programs have man pages in the imap-
utils
        which must be read carefully before making this change.
   Most other servers (e.g. Cyrus) require use of a non-standard format.  A
    full-fledged all-the-way-to-step-(5) format conversion is not
    significantly different from what you have to do with other servers.  The
    difference, which makes format conversion procedures somewhat more
    complicated with this server, is that there is no "all or nothing"
    requirement with this server.  There are many points in between.  A
    format conversion can be anything from a single mailbox or single user,
    to systemwide.
   This is good in that you can decide how far to go, or do the steps
    incrementally as you become more comfortable with the result.  On the
    other hand, there's no "One True Way" which can be boiled down to a simple
    set of pedagogical instructions.
   A number of sites have done full-fledged format conversions, and are
    reportedly quite happy with the results.  Feel free to ask in the
    comp.mail.imap newsgroup or the c-client mailing list for advice or help.