Cyrus Concepts and Features
This section explains the basic concepts of the Cyrus server design and discusses Cyrus’s feature set.
The Cyrus Mailbox Namespace
The Cyrus IMAP server uses a hierarchical mailbox naming convention similar to the naming scheme used in Usenet for naming newsgroups. The mailbox namespace is described in this section from the server’s point-of-view. As we will see later in the section, the mailbox names that the user sees in his IMAP client are not necessarily what the system administrator sees when she lists the mailbox names on the server.
Let’s take a look at a mailbox hierarchy. Our mailbox belongs to a user whose username is johndoe and contains a mailbox for incoming mail and three folders[20] named drafts, saved-messages, and sent-mail. On a Cyrus server, the incoming mailbox and the three folders would be named:
user.johndoe
|
user.johndoe.drafts
|
user.johndoe.saved-messages
|
user.johndoe.sent-mail
|
There are several restrictions on mailbox names. Only ASCII characters are allowed; shell metacharacters, /, a leading or trailing period, and two periods in a row are not allowed. Additionally, mailbox names are case-sensitive.
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