andreas wrote:


> I'd like to install an IMAP server to access my local stored mailbox
> files.

And those files are in which format?

> I don't need a new system/software/thing to get the mail from my mail
> provider. I'm happy with the current installation.

And the current installation is...?

At least you should say if you are working in a Unix environment, a
Windows environment or whatever.

> I have different Mail accounts, all mails/accounts in different
> directories. I have pine running to access these directories, this works
> fine!
>
> Now I don't want pine to access these files in the directories, I want
> pine to access a IMAP server and the IMAP server to make the read/write
> of the mailbox files.
>
> I have downloaded UW IMAP, but was not able to access/read any mail with
> pine. As I understand, one has to tell the IMAP server where to read the
> mailbox files.

No, in general you don't have to tell UW IMAP anything (did you read
the documentation?), it searches in the "usual" places for mailboxes.
The "usual" being /var/mail or /var/spool/mail, maybe others.

> I read in the documentation that it's possible to change
> the functions (definitions) where to read the mailbox files. But there I'm lost.

Yes, I usually change it to use a mail directory inside each user's
home dir. That makes it cleaner when the user has many mailboxes.

There are two ways to do that change:

- Modify a string in the code, or
- Create a file, /etc/c-client.cf which contains 2 lines:
I accept the risk
set mail-subdirectory mail

All this is documented in the source code package. What it does is
that the user's mailboxes are now in $HOME/mail, as in:

/home/sample-user/mail/INBOX
/home/sample-user/mail/Sent
/home/sample-user/mail/Trash

> I tried some directories/files from my system and recompiled the server
> but still wasn't able to read any mail.
>
> Now I prefer to keep UW IMAP with it's default configuration and change
> my Mailbox installation (as I know the internals of my mail system but
> not the one from UW IMAP). But what is the 'standard' way to store mails
> so that UW IMAP will be able to read it?

Do you mean format or place?

Formats handled by UW IMAP are mbox and other I don't remember.

> Is it possible to access different mail directories with mail from
> different mail accounts as it is with pine reading the files and
> directories directly?

The normal operation, where you have a SMTP mail server alongside your
IMAP server, is that the SMTP server receives the mail and stores it in
/var/mail/<username> and the IMAP server when requested by a mail
client (pine in your case) reads that mailbox and optionally moves the
messages to the user's mailbox (if the user's mailbox is somewhere
else, as in the case above where I want it to be inside the user's home
directory). The IMAP server may also move messages between mailboxes
(not automatically but using the operations available on the client).

If you notice the difference between the SMTP mailbox and the one that
may be used by the IMAP server: the first one is named after the user,
and it could be the only one used, but the IMAP server, probably under
a mail client request, creates the main mailbox which is not always
named INBOX as I showed above, sometimes is mbox, sometimes is the
original (i.e. is not moved to the user's directory, only the other
mailboxes are created there). I haven't looked into why different
names are used, as I said it probably is a mail client request, but
I've seen that it is different under Windows/Thunderbird,
Solaris/Outlook, Solaris/GNUMail which are the ones I've used.

> Any appreciated, hints, documentation,

All the documentation is on the UW site, and also comes with the
sources, some of it (the part not recommended) is in the c-client
library.
--
René Berber