Connecting to a newly installed IMAP server using mutt

I have installed the bincimapd IMAP server on one of my machines. I can
access the IMAP mail server via telnet as follows:

Trying 10.0.0.8...
Connected to markhobley.yi.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK Welcome to Binc IMAP Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Andreas Aardal Hanssen
at 2008-06-16 09:09:54 +0100
1 login mark password
1 OK LOGIN completed
2 CAPABILITY
* CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1
2 OK CAPABILITY completed
3 logout
* BYE Binc IMAP shutting down
3 OK LOGOUT completed
Connection closed by foreign host.

At the moment, my mail directory is empty (apart from the .password
file), and I have not yet composed or received any mail.

I try to connect my mail client to the imap server as follows:

mutt -f imap://neptune

Username at neptune: mark
Password for mark@neptune:

I get an error as follows, and the mail client immediately exits, before
I can do anything on the client.

SELECT failed: failed to open "./new/" (Permission denied)

Presumably, the client is trying to read from a directory new, which
does not yet exist.

Is there some configuration change that I should be making on the client
side, to create the empty maildir tree?

I guess I am expecting to see folders for INBOX and SENT ITEMS
(a bit like those in "Outlook Express").

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.

In comp.mail.mutt Mark Hobley <markhobley@hotpop.donottypethisbit.com> wrote:
> I have installed the bincimapd IMAP server on one of my machines. I can
> access the IMAP mail server via telnet as follows:
>
> Trying 10.0.0.8...
> Connected to markhobley.yi.org.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> * OK Welcome to Binc IMAP Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Andreas Aardal Hanssen
> at 2008-06-16 09:09:54 +0100
> 1 login mark password
> 1 OK LOGIN completed
> 2 CAPABILITY
> * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1
> 2 OK CAPABILITY completed
> 3 logout
> * BYE Binc IMAP shutting down
> 3 OK LOGOUT completed
> Connection closed by foreign host.
>
> At the moment, my mail directory is empty (apart from the .password
> file), and I have not yet composed or received any mail.
>
> I try to connect my mail client to the imap server as follows:
>
> mutt -f imap://neptune
>
> Username at neptune: mark
> Password for mark@neptune:
>
> I get an error as follows, and the mail client immediately exits, before
> I can do anything on the client.
>
> SELECT failed: failed to open "./new/" (Permission denied)
>
> Presumably, the client is trying to read from a directory new, which
> does not yet exist.

"new" is one of the three directories that make up a Maildir, "cur" and
"tmp" are the others. I'm sure that Binc IMAP expects these to exist.
Generally you would run some command such as 'maildirmake' on the server
to create the proper directory structure.

Matt Loar

In comp.mail.mutt Matthew Loar <matthew@loar.name> wrote:
>
> "new" is one of the three directories that make up a Maildir, "cur" and
> "tmp" are the others. I'm sure that Binc IMAP expects these to exist.
> Generally you would run some command such as 'maildirmake' on the server
> to create the proper directory structure.

Ok, there were some permissions problems on the directories. I have
sorted that, and the subdirectories new, cur, and tmp have been created
automatically, and I can connect to the empty mailserver using mutt:

mutt -f imap://neptune

Looking at an old archive I see that messages are in the~/Maildir/cur
directory. Presumably I configure the retriever agent to drop messages in
the ~/Maildir/cur directory? What is the purpose of the ~/Maildir/new
directory? Is that for outgoing mail?

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.

On Jul 27, 2:00 pm, markhob...@hotpop.donottypethisbit.com (Mark
Hobley) wrote:
....
> Looking at an old archive I see that messages are in the
> ~/Maildir/cur directory. Presumably I configure the retriever
> agent to drop messages in the ~/Maildir/cur directory? What
> is the purpose of the ~/Maildir/new directory? Is that for
> outgoing mail?

Warning: you're asking about low-level details of a particular mailbox
design and implementation. In particular, none of this should be
visible to your IMAP client, as those directories all together make up
a single 'logical' mailbox.

The specification for the 'stock' maildir mailbox format can be found
at:
http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html

That describes how the new, cur, and tmp subdirs are used. (Or at
least it did. I seem to recall that page saying more about how/when
messages were moved from new to cur.)

However, you should consult the documentation for your IMAP server
(bincimap) to see if it says more about the mailbox format it uses, as
some programs have extended the maildir mailbox format in various
ways, usually for performance reasons.


Philip Guenther

Mark Hobley writes:

> Looking at an old archive I see that messages are in the~/Maildir/cur
> directory. Presumably I configure the retriever agent to drop messages in
> the ~/Maildir/cur directory? What is the purpose of the ~/Maildir/new
> directory? Is that for outgoing mail?

No, it's not. Mail tools that know I how to deal with maildirs will handle
the details of moving messages in and out of it correctly, so you do not
need to be concerned with it. If you think that you need to be concerned
about it, that means that you're probably trying to use a tool that does not
know how to work with maildirs, and you're trying to shoehorn it in. Your
chances of success are rather slim.

If you really wanted to know, messages are delivered to a maildir by writing
them to the tmp subdirectory, then renaming them into the new directory.
Mail tools that read maildirs will check the new directory for new mail, and
move those messages to cur. There are also certain filename naming
conventions -- the filenames are not exactly arbitrary.





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In comp.mail.imap Philip Guenther <guenther@gmail.com> wrote:
> Warning: you're asking about low-level details of a particular mailbox
> design and implementation. In particular, none of this should be
> visible to your IMAP client, as those directories all together make up
> a single 'logical' mailbox.

Ok. I think that is working. I have restored an old Maildir from a
backup, and there are now squillions of messages appearing in the mail
client main window.

What I want to do now is move some of those messages to a logical
"Processed Mail" folder, (from a client point of view), so that they do
not clutter the main window. (I will have several years worth of mail
on an operational server.)

I am using mutt as a mail client.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.