[Dovecot] "virgin" mail accounts

Christian Balzer chibi at gol.com
Thu Jun 10 16:34:44 EEST 2004


Hello,

I'm willing to swear that with the 0.99.10.4 Debian package in my 
rather extensive tests with mailbox format dovecot created not only
any missing parental directories but also the INBOX file, but the 
later I can't prove/test now as I upgraded all respective boxes.

However 0.99.10.5 will still create (if needed and possible) missing 
directories for mbox storage, just not an empty INBOX.

But with maildir, it will not even do that, from a test with pop3
and imap login attempts to a freshly created account that had not 
received any mails yet:
---
Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3-login: Login: test [203.216.5.92]
Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3: I/O leak: 0x8050ce0 (0)
Jun 10 12:58:03 mb01 pop3: I/O leak: 0x8084aa0 (1)
Jun 10 12:58:49 mb01 imap-login: Login: ttest [203.216.5.92]
Jun 10 12:58:50 mb01 last message repeated 3 times
Jun 10 12:58:50 mb01 dovecot: child 9193 (imap) killed with signal 11
---

It died not very graceful in either case, esp. the later.

Unless there are very RFC'ish and imperative reasons, I'd suggest
that dovecot creates all missing bits if possible no matter what the
storage method or pretends to have encountered an empty mbox file or
maildir cur/new respectively. 

The rationale should be obvious, no frantic user calls about "My mail is
not working" when the answer is "Duh, that's because you never ever 
received one yet". ;)

Regards,

Christian Balzer
-- 
Christian Balzer        Network/Systems Engineer                NOC
chibi at gol.com   	Global OnLine Japan/Fusion Network Services
http://www.gol.com/




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