Re: destination/maildir: Manuals seem to use different standards / how to configure correctly?

On Sat, 7 Jul 2018 09:44:42 +0200
Peter Nabbefeld wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to setup a dovecot installation with getmail and found
> these instructions:
> 
> 1.
> http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/configuration.html#destination-maildir
> using "~/Maildir/"
> 
> 2. https://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/TriggerGetmailOnIMAPAccess
>     using "~/.maildir"
> 
> 3. Using Arch Linux, I've set "mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir" in 
> "/etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf" as advised in their wiki.
> 
> As these folder names seem having to do with storage format, I don't 
> want just to guess, so which variant would be correct?

It doesn't matter, unless there's something else that cares.


> Just to make sure, I'm using the correct toolset:
> 
> I want to move all my mail documents off of my provider (GMX), and I 
> want everything to be stored locally. So I want getmail to fetch 
> everything, including folder structure

getmail doesn't do that itself, but you might be able to get
dovecot sieve to read the folder name from the
X-getmail-retrieved-from-mailbox header and file automatically
creating missing folders as it goes. It would rely on some sieve
extensions that I don't use, so I'm not sure. 

Alternately there are IMAP syncing programs, such as offlineimap and
imapsync, that can sync directly to the maildir folders or through imap.
Note that there is no standard for creating maildir subfolders so, if
you sync directly make sure that any such program creates them in a way
that they can be read by dovecote.

If you just a one-off transfer from the remote imap server to the
local imap server it might be easier to just use a mail client to move
the mail manually - and then switch to getmail for new mail.