How to organise Maildir subdirectories

emailimapmaildirthunderbird

I have a mailserver:

  • Postfix for transfer
  • Dovecot/IMAP for reading
  • Maildir for storage
  • Thunderbird as main supported client (but of course, I want to be compatible with all)
  • Roundcube for webmail access

I can't seem to find a correct way to organise my Maildirs. Currently, my personal one looks like this:

drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 May  5 19:42 .Drafts
drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 May  7 16:55 .INBOX.Concepten // Dutch for drafts
drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 May  7 12:14 .INBOX.Junk
drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 May  7 12:14 .INBOX.Trash
drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 May  7 16:54 .INBOX.Verzonden // Dutch for Sent
drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 May  6 19:50 .Junk
drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 Apr 27 14:41 .Ongewenste e-mail // Dutch for Junk
drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 May  6 08:26 .Sent
drwx------ 5 bartvh bartvh   4096 May  6 12:09 .Trash
drwx------ 2 bartvh mail    45056 May  8 08:24 cur
-rw------- 1 bartvh bartvh     17 Feb 14 19:03 dovecot-keywords
-rw------- 1 bartvh bartvh  26778 May  8 08:24 dovecot-uidlist
-rw------- 1 bartvh bartvh   7264 May  8 08:24 dovecot.index
-rw------- 1 bartvh bartvh 411648 May  8 08:24 dovecot.index.cache
-rw------- 1 bartvh bartvh  19248 May  8 08:24 dovecot.index.log
drwx------ 2 bartvh mail    12288 May  8 08:24 new
-rw------- 1 bartvh bartvh    109 May  7 16:55 subscriptions
drwx------ 2 bartvh mail     4096 May  8 08:16 tmp

As you can see, it's a mess and there's a lot of double stuff. The ones with .INBOX before them were created by Thunderbird, the other ones I made myself, I think. However, I can't really seem to get TB working with them. They don't appear there.
Additionally, all of a sudden, TB won't see any of the folders anymore. If I click Inbox->Concepten it will yell at me saying ".INBOX.INBOX.Concepten does not exist" ??

What can I do to organise this? What is the recommended way?

Best Answer

I Agree with @David_Collantes: the one making the mess is your various clients which I suspect have different ideas about your Maildir namespace.

In Thunderbird go to Server Setting -> Advanced and set your 'Personal namespace' to ".". You might also have to uncheck the 'Allow server to override these namespaces' box.

This setting controls where the client looks for folders. So you could make a subsection of your IMAP folders that's just for thunderbird.

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