Setting Up UW IMAP and the "Dangerous" imaprc File on OS X (and other systems)

One of these days I'll install a non-UW IMAP server, probably Dovecot, but for now I'm sticking with UW IMAP because 1) I'm familiar with it; 2) it can deal with standard mbox-formatted mailboxes (which I have a lot of); and 3) it is the "reference IMAP server."

To install UW IMAP on Mac OS X Tiger, I followed the excellent instructions in Jeff Marder's Using Spamassassin with Mail.app on Mac OS X Tiger (also available here) in the section called Installing and Configuring UW IMAP. But, instead of editing src/osdep/unix/env_unix.c, I used the unedited source code and then before rebooting I created two files: /etc/c-client.cf, which contains this:
I accept the risk
set allow-user-config 1

and ~/.imaprc, which contains this:
I accept the risk
set mail-subdirectory Msgs

The first file tells the IMAP server that all users are allowed to use an ~/.imaprc file and the second tells the IMAP server that I want my personal default mail directory to be ~/Msgs. Other users on the system can either specify whatever they like for their mail-subdirectory, for example mail or Mail, or not use an ~/.imaprc file and instead use the UW IMAP default mail directory (~).

To learn more about these two files, including lots of warnings about them, see .imaprc secrets revealed!, which is in docs/imaprc.txt.

I you have any tips or warnings about using UW IMAP and these configuration files, please post them here.

2006-Jan-17 Update: Today, thanks to the del.icio.us IMAP tag, I found Setting up a local IMAP archive of your mail on Tiger, which includes some of the information that's on Jeff Marder's page as well as some extra information. I recommend reading both of these articles before you install UW IMAP on your system.
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Is it possible to set the mail-subdirectory in the /etc/c-client.cf

That way I can specify where a users mail lives, without accepting the risk of users doing nasty things with the imaprc file?
 

 

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