[rhn-users] RHEL4 and dovecot, pop3d only

[f00bar]

We have dovecot running on RHEL4 and all is
functioning well.
However, dovecot seems to require access to ~/mail for
the creation of IMAP indexes.

The file /etc/dovecot.conf was modified:
#protocols = imap imaps -> protocols = pop3
imap_listen = [::] -> #imap_listen = [::]

I did try changing 
#default_mail_env = -> default_mail_env =
mbox:~/mail/:INDEX=MEMORY
but it did not do the trick.

The files accessed are:
/home/{userid}/mail/.imap/INBOX
   .customflags
   .imap.index
   .imap.index.data
   .imap.index.log
   .imap.index.tree

How can I turn this off?  We have a single /home for
all users for all servers and do not want the mail
server to mount the system /home.

As a hack, I made user directories in the /home of the
mail server but this is not desired from a
administration perspective as it requires making a
directory manually for each user added to the system.

Best regards,
John Baxter