Relation of filesystem to Cyrus mailbox structure

[Rick Kunkel]

I am currently pulling my hair out, trying to get this to work... Lemme 
show you a cyradm session, with some carriage returns thrown in for 
reading ease:

Incidentally, we're running "unixhierarchysep: yes".

localhost> ls -l /var/mail/c/user/calvizio
-rw-r--r-- 1 cyrus mail 1911537 2007-09-07 02:43 1.
-rw-r--r-- 1 cyrus mail 3717492 2007-09-07 02:43 2.
-rw-r--r-- 1 cyrus mail    6364 2007-09-07 02:43 3.
-rw------- 1 cyrus mail   32252 2007-09-14 11:52 cyrus.cache
-rw------- 1 cyrus mail     183 2007-09-14 12:32 cyrus.header
-rw------- 1 cyrus mail    1636 2007-09-14 11:52 cyrus.index

localhost> lam user/calvizio*
user/calvizio:
   cyrus lrswipcda
   calvizio lrswipcda
user/calvizio/INBOX:
   cyrus lrswipcda
   calvizio lrswipcda

localhost> cm user/calvizio/INBOX
createmailbox: Mailbox already exists

localhost> sam user/calvizio cyrus all

localhost> sam user/calvizio/INBOX cyrus all
setaclmailbox: cyrus: lrswipcda: System I/O error

localhost> reconstruct user/calvizio

localhost> reconstruct user/calvizio/INBOX
reconstruct: System I/O error

localhost> cm user/calvizio/INBOX
createmailbox: Mailbox already exists

localhost> dm user/calvizio/INBOX
deletemailbox: System I/O error

AGH....  I tried actually creating the dirs in the file system to match, 
and re-owning them to cyrus:mail, to no avail.

Furthermore, ONE of the time I tried to create the mailbox, I typed "cm 
INBOX" instead of "cm user/calvizio/INBOX" by mistake, and now I have this 
wacko little mailbox called "INBOX" at the top of everything:

localhost> lm
INBOX (\HasNoChildren)

I can't seem to delete this little monster either....

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Rick Kunkel


On Fri, 14 Sep 2007, Joseph Brennan wrote:

>
>
> --On Friday, September 14, 2007 8:27 -0700 Rick Kunkel <kunkel at w-link.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Where I've been stuck recently is trying to figure out things like how to
>> manipulate mailboxes by using the file system.  Maybe this isn't really
>> practical using mdir.
>>
>> Here's the latest:  I have a user that we migrated from mbox.  She has
>> her  inbox folder, which migrated fine.  Then she has a couple of other
>> folder,  which migrated fine.  Then she has folders within folders, and
>> those  refuse to show up, and it won't let her subscribe to them.  Here's
>> how it  they're in the filesystem:
>>
>> /var/mail/j/user/janedoe   <-- Inbox: Migrated fine
>> /var/mail/j/user/janedoe/folder1  <-- Also migrated fine
>> /var/mail/j/user/janedoe/folder1/folderA  <-- I can't get to show
>>
>> I don't think the user really NEEDS the folder called folder1 above, but
>> wants the folders inside of it.  So I tried to move folderA back one
>> level  so that it was sitting inside the /var/mail/j/user/janedoe folder,
>> but  that doesn't work.  I figured I had to run a reconstruct command,
>> but no  avail there either.
>>
>> I guess the fundamental question here are these:
>>
>> - If I make changes to the file system, how do I get these reflected in
>> Cyrus mailbox views?
>
>
> It's less painful if you can use Cyrus to do this stuff.  I know :-)
> The main reason you might have to do this would be restoring entire
> mailboxes off backups.
>
> Given  /var/mail/j/user/janedoe/folder1/folderA , Cyrus might have
> three mailboxes named user.janedoe, user.janedoe.folder, and
> user.janedoe.folder.folderA, but not necessarily.
>
> cyradm will show you what folders exist, in Cyrus's view, and it
> lets you create, delete, and rename mailboxes to make the Cyrus
> view be what you want it to be.  Cyrus will move the files around
> in the filesystem accordingly.
>
> To do batch work a perl script can use Cyrus::IMAP::Admin to do
> what cyradm would do.
>
> When we migrated from mbox, we created Cyrus mailboxes for the
> directories too.  For ~janedoe/mail/foo/bar (mbox file) we created
> both user.janedoe.foo and user.janedoe.foo.bar, even though the
> user had never stored mail in foo (since it was a directory).
> This seemed simpler than having to explain later that foo could
> be part of a mailbox name but not exist as a mailbox!
>
> Joseph Brennan
> Lead Email Systems Engineer
> Columbia University Information Technology
>
>
>
>
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>
> ----
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>