IMAP and outlook 5$!&85!!

[Robert Meyer]

It wasn't hard but you have to get an older version of uw-imap 'cuz there
doesn't seem to be anyone maintaining the maildir patches and the guy at
UW doesn't want to handle it in his source tree...

The place that I found it is: http://greboguru.org/qmail/

I've been hacking around with the stuff tonight and I think that I can get
imap-2001a to build with the patches but I had to change stuff in
src/osdep/unix/Makefile to point to the right place for the openssl
includes.  I changed line 33 to read:
SSLINCLUDE=/usr/include/openssl

That worked on Mandrake 8.1 but will probably have to be changed if it
lives elsewhere.

I then did a 'make slx' and it compiled.  I'm going to play with it tomorrow
at work to see what happens.

You will have to get imap2001a from:
ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/old/imap-2001a.tar.Z

and the patch from:
http://greboguru.org/qmail/imap-2001a.4-patch-with-delete-fix

Then untar the imap source:
tar xvfz imap-2001a.tar.Z

Then patch the source:
patch -p0 < imap-2001a.4-patch-with-delete-fix

Then 'cd' to imap-2001a
change line 33 as mentioned above to:
SSLINCLUDE=/usr/include/openssl

Type 'make slx' to build the thing

Copy imapd/imapd to your favorite location for such things.
Fix your xinetd.conf (or xinetd.d/imap) file for the right
path for imapd, 'killall -HUP xinetd' and you're in business.

I may have a problem with a user that seems to still generate
mbox files.  I think it has to do with not having a proper 'Maildir'
when he started.  There is mention of a kludge on the page to remove
the 'mbox' driver.  I may just do that.  Of course, the workaround is
to send email to each user before he tries to copy folders to the IMAP
server :-).  It seems that if the thing doesn't find a 'Maildir' in the
user's home directory with the appropriate 'cur', 'new' and 'tmp' directories,
it tries to do 'mbox' format.  This really annoys outlook when you try to copy
folders to the IMAP server.  I managed to crash my boss' Outlook many times
before I left today but I think this is the reason.  I will try to remove the
'mbox' driver in the morning.

Sorry for the stream-of-consiousness vomit-stream but I just collected my
thoughts
for the morning and I will probably read this message when I log in to get
started.

I also found a program that purports to convert mbox to maildir format at:
http://qmail.sgi.net/qmail/mbox2maildir

You'll have to read the file and probably get 'qmail' from
http://www.qmail.org/
and read and understand 'maildir2mbox' and experiment a lot before trying this
in a production environment.


Hope this helps...

I'm VERY tired, now.  I'm going to bed.

Cheers!

Bob 

--- Justin Bennett <Justin.Bennett at dynabrade.com> wrote:
> Bob,
> 
> Great! Glad you got it fixed, do you have info on the maildir extention
> setup, or a URL? I recently converted our Luxembourg office to Imap using
> squirrelmail, they had all kinds of stuff, outlook, mozilla, netscape. It
> gets kinda hairy when their PC crashes or the loose messages when it's on
> the local machine and thier support staff is 4000 miles away. They all had
> subfolders upon subfolders, this all went away when they went to Imap (UW
> out of box). It'd be nice if I could give them their subfolders back.
> Don't know what kind of greif would involved in converting from file based
> to directory imap though, could be more trouble than it's worth.
> 
> Justin
> 
> Robert Meyer said:
> > Well, Justin, you win the prize.  It was a combination of xinetd
> > instances being set for 60 and stupid Outlook initiating sometimes as
> > many as 10 or 12 simultaneous connections to the IMAP server.  It turns
> > out that there is mention of this behavior on one of the University of
> > Washington's web pages.  I set the number of instances to 'UNLIMITED'
> > and it looks like it wants to hang out between 80 and 110 sessions alive
> > at any one time.
> >
> > I mentioned Cyrus IMAP, when I actually meant Courier IMAP.  I tried
> > that after it became aparent that these folks needed to have folders
> > with sub folders and messages in them.  'mbox' format doesn't support
> > that kind of thing, 'cuz mbox uses one file for all messages and you
> > can't stick a directory in a file.  I tried Courier IMAP but kept
> > getting messages to the effect that outlook couldn't synchronize with
> > new messages.  I checked the courier site for information and he
> > mentioned that outlook had problems and he wasn't inclined to do
> > anything about it.
> >
> > Insanity prevails...
> >
> > Cheers!
> >
> > Bob
> > --- Justin Bennett <Justin.Bennett at dynabrade.com> wrote:
> >> Your fireing it out of xinetd I assume. In the /etc/xinetd.conf what
> >> is instances set for? You may be running out of imap processes. Just a
> >> thought. I had this the default is something like 60, I have 70+
> >> users. See a problem. It took a while to become an issue cuz netscape
> >> only has one imap at a time.. :) but at times there was over 60
> >> active, and any new requests to connect would get connection refused.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Robert Meyer said:
> >> > OK, this is bad.  I have IMAP running (UW-IMAP) with a zillion
> >> outlook users.  Some of the outlook processes create
> >> > as many as 10 connections to IMAP and hold them there,
> >> > never closing them.  What the heck is going on, here?
> >> >
> >> > Eventually, they start getting 'imap.domain.com' is offline
> >> > and can't get their Email.  If I kill all of the 'imapd'
> >> > processes, they immediately get reconnected.
> >> >
> >> > I'm running this on RedHat 7.3 with UW-imap 4.5 with
> >> > the maildir extensions.  Don't mention Cyrus 'cuz
> >> > Outlook REALLY hates that one and the maintainer
> >> > claims that it's outlook's problem and he ain't
> >> > gonna fix it...
> >> >
> >> > HELP!!!
> >> >
> >> > Cheers!
> >> > Bob
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > =====
> >> > Bob Meyer
> >> > Knightwing Communications, Inc.
> >> > 36 Cayuga Blvd
> >> > Depew, NY 14043
> >> > Phone: 716-308-8931 or 716-681-0076
> >> > Meyer_RM at Yahoo.com
> >> >
> >> > __________________________________________________
> >> > Do you Yahoo!?
> >> > Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
> >> > http://news.yahoo.com
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > This message has been scanned for viruses and
> >> > dangerous content by Dynabrade using Mailscanner,
> >> > and is believed to be clean.
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> -------------------------------------------
> >> Justin Bennett
> >> Red Hat (Linux) Certified Engineer
> >> Network Administrator
> >> Dynabrade Inc.
> >> 8989 Sheridan Dr
> >> Clarence, NY 14031
> >> 716-631-0100 ext 215
> >>
> >
> > =====
> > Bob Meyer
> > Knightwing Communications, Inc.
> > 36 Cayuga Blvd
> > Depew, NY 14043
> > Phone: 716-308-8931 or 716-681-0076
> > Meyer_RM at Yahoo.com
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
> > http://news.yahoo.com
> >
> > --
> > This message has been scanned for viruses and
> > dangerous content by Dynabrade using Mailscanner,
> > and is believed to be clean.
> 
> 
> -- 
> -------------------------------------------
> Justin Bennett
> Red Hat (Linux) Certified Engineer
> Network Administrator
> Dynabrade Inc.
> 8989 Sheridan Dr
> Clarence, NY 14031
> 716-631-0100 ext 215
> 

=====
Bob Meyer
Knightwing Communications, Inc.
36 Cayuga Blvd
Depew, NY 14043
Phone: 716-308-8931 or 716-681-0076
Meyer_RM at Yahoo.com

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