POP3 and IMAP daemon moving mail on some accounts

JulinaB · January 17, 2021, 4:51pm

Hi. I am using the default UW POP3/IMAP daemon to retrieve main from one of my systems.

Local email is delivered to “/var/spool/mail/username” as expected. It is then accessable via the command line “mail” program.

If I then retrieve the email with either IMAP or POP3 (with ‘leave mail on server’) the mail is moved from “/var/spool/username” to “/home/username/mbox”, but only on accounts where /home/username/mbox already exists.

Email that has been moved is no longer accesable with the commandline “mail” command but can still be accessed by POP3 and IMAP.

It seems that when when the UW daemon is asked to access mail it first moves it to the users home director if “/home/username/mbox” exists.

Is this correct? and can somone explain whats actually going on?

Thanks

arvidjaar · January 17, 2021, 5:59pm

Yes

and can somone explain whats actually going on?

Works as designed.

github.com

uw-imap/imap/blob/master/docs/drivers.txt

/* ========================================================================
 * Copyright 1988-2006 University of Washington
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * 
 * ========================================================================
 */

		   c-client Driver Characteristics
			     Mark Crispin
			   11 December 2006


     Drivers are code modules that support different mailbox storage
technologies.  A mailbox storage technology may be implemented by

This file has been truncated. show original

JulinaB · January 17, 2021, 6:21pm

Perfect. Thanks for the pointer so I can read up on it. I was just curious;)