dovecot sees ~/Maildir, seeks folders in ~/ on Lenny (OK on Etch)

[John Stumbles <john@stumbles.org.uk>]

I've got dovecot set up on an Etch box to use maildirs, with folders 
under ~/Maildir.

The same setup on Lenny finds a user's INBOX in their ~/Maildir but 
doesn't find any other folders - instead it looks for them in the user's 
home directory.

The users' filesystem is the same: it is hosted on the Lenny box and 
exported to the Etch box. I have fiddled with /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf 
and even copied over the config file from the working Etch box.

I've also tried deleting the ~/Maildir/dovecot.index* files.

I've tested with icedove (thunderbird) and sylpheed on the Etch box 
(accessing the dovecot server on the Lenny box) and icedove and mutt on 
the Lenny box itself.

I've got `mail_debug = yes` in dovecot.conf but don't get anything 
useful in syslog
Jun 13 11:03:45 kryten imapd[9922]: connect from 192.168.1.12 (192.168.1.12)
Jun 13 11:03:45 kryten imapd[9922]: imaps SSL service init from 192.168.1.12
Jun 13 11:03:47 kryten imapd[9922]: Authenticated user=john 
host=targa.stumbles.org.uk [192.168.1.12] mech=PLAIN
Jun 13 11:15:02 kryten imapd[9922]: Hangup user=john 
host=targa.stumbles.org.uk [192.168.1.12]

Nor do I get a /var/log/dovecot file.


I'm getting to the point of thinking maybe it's a bug with dovecot 
itself (although Googling for "dovecot debian lenny Maildir bug" doesn't 
pick up anything like what I'm experiencing) and, as a way of checking 
this, I wonder if I could install the Etch version on the Lenny box.

# file `which dovecot`
/usr/sbin/dovecot: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 
(SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for 
GNU/Linux 2.4.1, stripped

 - suggests I couldn't simply copy the executable and run that, as the 
shared libraries would be all wrong. What would be involved in getting 
an older version working? I've heard of (but never used) "backports" 
which AIUI are versions from newer distro releases. (And of course I 
could try that too, in case it was a bug that got fixed later.)


# perl -ne 'print if /^\s*[^#\s]/' dovecot.conf
protocols = imap imaps
log_path = /var/log/dovecot
login_process_per_connection = yes
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
mail_extra_groups = mail
mail_debug = yes
protocol imap {
}
protocol pop3 {
  pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv
}
auth default {
  mechanisms = plain
  passdb pam {
  }
  userdb passwd {
  }
  user = root
}
dict {
}
plugin {
}


--
John Stumbles                                    http://stumbles.org.uk
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