Re: Attention: imapd gpoing back to $HOME as mailbox root
> Although a number of people have supported my decision to make $HOME/mail
> the mailbox root for the UW imap server I maintain, I think it will be for
> the best overall if I make it $HOME again.
Argh! Okay. Does anybody want to suggest any other imap daemons that allow
me to set the mailroot to $HOME/mail where it's supposed to be?
> Reasons:
>
> 1) That's what most of the bug reports are about.
Problem now is that, when you refresh your folder list, you see all of your
files in your home directory. Many of these differ substantially from the
normal "inbox" format. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new slew of
complaints from sysadmins because all of their users are having trouble
opening their "core" folder. :)
In all seriousness, though... I think that one of the mantras of
user-friendliness these days is that the user shouldn't be allowed to easily
select something wrong. If imapd uses $HOME for its mail directories,
there's really nothing to prevent the user from being presented with a list
of various files when they ask for a list of their mail folders.
> 2) That's what the upstream distribution does. So it's less maintenance
> headaches for me.
Up to this point, one of the attractive features of Debian is that it
*fixes* the brain-dead defaults put in by the people who originally wrote
the software.
> 3) It's what people expect. (Principle of least surprise)
Well, you could fix that by having some sort of big warning in the postinst
script or something that required the user to hit a return so that you could
be sure they see it.
Actually, what we *really* need is some sort of consensus. I mean, it would
be pretty nice if imapd and other tools (like procmail) all looked in the
same default location without any configuration. I know Elm and Pine used
$HOME/Mail and $HOME/mail at one time.
Surely, I can't be the only one who sees the benefit in having all of the
tools look in the same location for the "Sent Mail" folder, and "Drafts",
etc.....
> 4) The reasoning behind the change wasn't that good in the first place.
Aside from the fact that compartmentalization is a good thing. I mean,
heck... while we're at it, why even bother using /var/spool/mail? Just dump
all mail into /var/spool! :)
But I don't expect this to change anyone's mind, I guess. What I'm really
after is a suggestion for a replacement imapd since I'm obviously going to
have to purge Jaldhar's. I tried the Cyrus-Imap, but wasn't able to get that
to work right out of the box.
- Joe
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