TWIG Administrators Manual

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Cyrus IMAP server

The Cyrus IMAP server has several unique features about it. These can either be a great boon or a horrible impairment, depending on your needs. That discussion is outside the scope of this document. Please see http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/ (especially http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/cyrus-overview-TOC.html) to learn more about Cyrus's advantages and limitations.

In Cyrus, a user's mailboxes are listed as subfolders of their INBOX folder. This allows for Cyrus to create shared folders for bulletin boards, Usenet access, mailing list inboxes (to cut down on the number of copies of the same message stored on that server), etc. However, this ability is often not used. In order to assist administration of TWIG, there is an option to hide the "INBOX." part of all folders. Thus, any folder specific to a user (e.g. "INBOX.sent-mail") can appear more as the average user would expect (e.g. "sent-mail"). This ability extends to all parts of IMAP folder names, including creating a folder, listing folders in the "Go" menu, etc.

NOTE: If this option is not turned on, TWIG will expect the user to know about Cyrus's IMAP path scheme! They will need to type "INBOX.myfolder", not "myfolder", when creating a new folder.

Another side effect of Cyrus's IMAP path scheme is that extra attention must be paid to setting the sent-mail folder's name. In all likelihood, a setting of "INBOX.sent-mail" is preferable to "sent-mail".

Common Settings

Some common settings for TWIG when using the Cyrus IMAP server include the following:
$config["imap_path"] = "";
Set this to null (i.e. "") because all of Cyrus's path information is stored in the folder's name. For example, the folder user.foo.bar is the sub-folder "bar" from the INBOX for user "foo".
$config["imap_sentfolder"] = "INBOX.sent-mail";
For a sent folder that is compatible with PINE. However, if you're using Cyrus your users aren't likely to be using PINE. Alternately, consider the following.
$config["imap_sentfolder"] = "INBOX.Sent";
For a sent folder that is compatible with Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator. The general idea is to make sure that you have "INBOX." at the beginning of your string. This is much like placing "~/" at the beginning of a shell script in Unix.
$config["imap_cyrus"] = 1;
Use this if you are not planning on using shared folders. If you use the Usenet or bulletin board software that cooperates with Cyrus, TWIG might not work correctly. We have not yet tested that configuration. However, you are far more likely to want this than to not want this if you are using Cyrus.
$config["imap_cyrus"] = 0;
This will make TWIG leave in the "INBOX." part of all folder names. Use it only if you want your users to be subjected to this aspect of Cyrus.

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