I am creating a mail server using qmail, procmail,dovecot,clamav & spamassassin with Red Hat ES 3. It uses IMAP and a Maildir in the user's area. This is my first install of a mail server.

I am doing final testing using both KMail and Evolution. I used /var/qmail/bin/maildirmake to create $HOME/Maildir. It has three subdirectories: new, cur, & tmp. The system has created a $HOME/Mail directory with the expected subdirectories Inbox, Outbox, etc., but each of them have new,cur & tmp subdirectories.

First of all, if these directories are in the user's $HOME, how can they also be on the server? If they are copied from the server, where on the server do they reside?

When configuring KMail, I have tried going to Configure, Network, Receiving and Modify. Under General, Prefix to folders: I've specified $HOME/Mail. On the main KMail page, under the user name is an inbox that is always empty. Under it are folders for Inbox, Outbox, etc. The mails that show up there are always raw data, showing file names with contents that just "dump" the file, but do not format it as I have gotten used to with POP accounts.

How can I get emails to appear as they should? If I could get instructions for KMail, I might be able to figure it out for Evolution. What I fear is that the problem may be in the configuration of one of the programs on the server and I have no clue where to look for that.

Thanks for any help offered.
-Alan

Where did you execute maildirmake, on the server, or on the client machine? The maildir structure should be on the server only. The client connects to the IMAP daemon on the server to update the client's local cache of the data, but with IMAP the permanent copy stays on the server. When you delete something, it's not really "gone" until it has been expunged by the server.

The client machine will store the local cache in whatever format that particular mail client uses.