Sharing mailboxes between users?

I have a simple IMAP server at home, using Dovecot, with Maildir format
mailboxes. I access it from desktops, and from a mobile device. I'd
like to only see some mailboxes on the mobile device, but the mail
client on it doesn't support showing a subset of the available mailboxes.

I tried a hack. I made a second user on my server, and set the mobile
device to use that user for mail. Then, for each mailbox I wanted to
share from my main user account, I made a corresponding mailbox in the
second user's mail directory, but used symlinks to point the new, cur,
and tmp directories in the mailbox to the corresponding directories in
the first user's mailboxes. I then fiddled with permissions and access
control lists to allow both accounts the necessary access.

This did not work. I have no idea why. Maybe I botched the permissions
somewhere?

Before I go to far with that approach, trying to make that symlink hack
work, is there a better approach? Maybe a server that has built in
support for making some mailboxes shared between users?

--
--Tim Smith

Tim Smith <reply_in_group@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
[...]
> Before I go to far with that approach, trying to make that symlink hack
> work, is there a better approach? Maybe a server that has built in
> support for making some mailboxes shared between users?

Cyrus supports shared mailboxes (with ACLs).

Ralf
--
Ralf Döblitz * Schapenstraße 6 * 38104 Braunschweig * Germany
Phone: +49-531-2361223 Fax: +49-531-2361224 mailto:doeblitz@doeblitz.net
Homepage: http://www.escape.de/users/selene/
Mit UTF-8 kann man gleichzeitig äöüßÄÖÜæœłø‱¼½¾¤¹²³¢€£¥¶ §¬÷×±©®™¡¿ verwenden…

Tim Smith writes:

> Before I go to far with that approach, trying to make that symlink hack
> work, is there a better approach? Maybe a server that has built in
> support for making some mailboxes shared between users?

Courier-IMAP, when configured to use virtual mail accounts, can set up
virtual shared folders with access control lists that define which accounts
can access it.

Note that this requires some amount of know-how to set up; furthermore some
IMAP clients may not correctly implement the advanced IMAP functionality
that's required for this to work properly.

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> This did not work. I have no idea why. Maybe I botched the permissions
> somewhere?

Use a client that has more robust error messages. I'm guessing permissions
are the problem. I've got a similar setup for some mail I read from a
smartphone. Works reasonably well. I do have to manage the folders
manually from a ssh shell but I can live with the effort to get the
functionality. I only have to do this if some new folder gets created on
the desktop that needs to be seen on the phone, and this doesn't happen
often enough to be a problem for me.

> Before I go to far with that approach, trying to make that symlink hack
> work, is there a better approach? Maybe a server that has built in
> support for making some mailboxes shared between users?

Shared folders are one thing, shared Inboxes is another. Trying to create a
linked Inbox setup is going to be a challenge with just about anything BUT
the symlink approach.