[MlMt] local folders

[Pierre Igot]

Hi all,

I gave this a try today on my Mac running Monterey and I wouldn’t describe it as “low effort” for Mac users who are not that comfortable with Unix stuff.

I believe I was able to successfully install Homebrew and then Dovecot, but:

*1*
The instructions apply to Dovecot 2.3.19, whereas Homebrew installed Dovecot 2.3.20, so I had to adapt the command to copy config files.

*2*
The instructions say:

File: /usr/local/etc/dovecot/local.conf
File: /opt/homebrew/etc/dovecot/local.conf

without indicating what these two different lines mean. Does it mean that the user needs to create a file called “local.conf” in BOTH locations? On my system, there doesn’t seem to be anything relevant under “/opt/”, so I just ignored that second line, but I don’t know if it was OK to do so.

*3*
The instructions to customize the local.conf file say “mail_uid = CHANGE_THIS_to_your_short_user_name_or_uid” but that doesn’t specify what “short user name” we are talking about here. I am assuming it means the short user name in macOS itself, but it’s not 100% clear.

*4*
The instructions also say:

There are two changes needed to the default conf files as well.

File: /usr/local/etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf
File: /opt/homebrew/etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf

Again, two lines with no explanation. On my system, there doesn’t seem to be anything relevant under “/opt/”, so I just ignored that second line, but I don’t know if it was OK to do so.

*5*
After creating the local-conf file under /usr/local/etc/dovecot/, I was able to do this:

original at Mac-Pro-2020 ~ % sudo brew services start dovecot

Warning: Taking root:admin ownership of some dovecot paths:
  /usr/local/Cellar/dovecot/2.3.20/sbin
  /usr/local/Cellar/dovecot/2.3.20/sbin/dovecot
  /usr/local/opt/dovecot
  /usr/local/opt/dovecot/bin
  /usr/local/opt/dovecot/sbin
  /usr/local/var/homebrew/linked/dovecot
This will require manual removal of these paths using `sudo rm` on
brew upgrade/reinstall/uninstall.
==> Successfully started `dovecot` (label: homebrew.mxcl.dovecot)

So this seems to suggest that dovecot is running properly.

HOWEVER, when I then went to MailMate to add the new (local) IMAP account, I was faced with having to make decisions with no guidance, specifically:

a) MailMate has an “Email Address(es)” field. The instructions do not say what to put there (if anything).

b) When adding an IMAP account in MailMate, “Require SSL” is checked by default. The instructions do not say to uncheck that, although “ssl = no” in the sample config file provided suggests that this needs to be off.

c) For the user name, the instructions say “Account ID: Whatever username you like”, but it doesn’t specify if there is any connection to whatever the user might have put in the “Email Address(es)” field above.

d) The instructions don’t say if the SMTP server section can be left entirely blank. (Again, “Require SSL” is checked by default.)

*6*
I tried adding the IMAP account using both “localhost” and “127.0.0.1” as the IMAP server, a dummy email address and a dummy user name, and the password I put in the local.conf file. But that didn’t seem to work in MailMate. At best, I got a source with the globe icon with the wheel turning endlessly. I tried ignoring the wheel and creating a new IMAP folder under that new source. It created the folder, but the folder name stayed greyed out indefinitely, with two wheels turning endlessly. I tried moving a message there just to see, and it moved it, but the wheels continued turning. I then used MailMate’s “Show in Finder” contextual menu command for that moved message to see where it put it, and it was put under ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/Messages/IMAP/, and NOT in the folder that I had specified in in the local.conf file, which suggests that it didn’t work properly.

*7*
Also, the instructions say "By default dovecot logs will show up in /var/log/mail.log”, but I checked, even after stopping Dovecot in Terminal, and there is no such log there on my system.

At this stage, I am afraid I gave up. In spite of what the message from Jolin below suggests, this stuff is NOT straightforward. I consider myself an experienced Mac user, but there are just too many unexplained things here, and clearly I did something wrong since things are not working right.

So Mac users like me need more than this page of instructions, I am afraid.

Pierre



On 29 May 2023, at 11:04, Jolin Warren wrote:

> On 19 Apr 2023, at 20:47, Randy Bush wrote:
>
>> i was hoping for something very simple to run on laptop for local-only use.  it'll take effort to configure dovecot as a simple local imap-only server.
>
> I’m quite late to this, so maybe not of use to you anymore… When I switched to MailMate, I wanted to keep my local folders so I set up Dovecot as a simple local IMAP-only server. I followed the instructions here and it was fairly low effort as I recall:
>
> https://xdeb.org/post/2014/running-dovecot-as-a-local-only-imap-server-on-os-x/
>
> -- 
> => Jolin