On Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 11:13:27PM +0100, Thomas Michael Wanka wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 1 Dec 2001, at 22:30, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> > What's the interest of this ?
> 
> accessing the Maildirs without using the IMAP server seems to be 
> faster and/or does not stress the server too much. (actually it seems 
> to be faster, I cannot tell why exactly) 
> 
> > - in general we need an imap server anyway
> 
> If no imap server is needed you have another applikation to install.

Yes, but in general one is needed :)

> 
> > - if it can access the filesystem directly this means there is a suid
> > root
> >   program somewhere, accessible from the web server. I don't like this
> >   very much
> 
> I see he potential problem. IIRC the webmail packages uid belong to 
> the group that has rw access to the maildir.

OK, so you have to make sure that all mailboxes are in the rigth group, and
are group readable. Quite hard if peoples access their mailboxes with
various mail clients, and/or use directories on their $HOME to store
mailboxes.

> 
> > - a webmail using imap is compatible with any other MUA using imap
> 
> To my experience people do not understand what is going on. If they 
> can access their mail through the webinterface and their MUA sooner 
> or later some users will insist that "someone hacked the system and 
> moved messages from the new dir to the read dir".

No, at last this doesn't happen with IMAP. You have the exactly the same
mailbox list any imap-capable MUA, including the webmail interface.
By default MUA I know won't move mails around, unless explicitely asked.

--
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
--