[Dovecot] Outlook causes BIG dovecot index problem (beta 8, outlook 2003)

[Casey Allen Shobe]

Casey Allen Shobe wrote:
> Well, I typed up all the below, then managed to fix the problem before 
> sending this to the list.  I'll send it anyways, in case anybody else 
> is affected by it (and because it does indicate a definite bug in 
> Dovecot's experimental Kerberos support).  The fix is to recompile 
> without kerberos enabled, and to take gssapi out of the auth methods 
> in the config (the latter alone may or may not be enough of a fix on 
> it's own, I didn't try it without recompiling).
>
> I'm guessing that Outlook attempts to use Kerberos authentication by 
> default or something and silently fails and uses other auth methods, 
> and that any attempt to use Kerberos is in fact what hoses the 
> server.  However I have not done any further testing against beta8 
> with a Kerberos-enabled client such as KMail, so I leave this as an 
> exercise for the next adventurer.
>
> I'm also uncertain as to why this problem does not manifest on our 
> main servers, which also have Kerberos enabled (and Outlook 2003 
> clients).  Or /had/ anyways, as I'm disabling Kerberos support as we 
> speak as a preventative measure.

Kerberos actually apparently didn't have anything to do with it, so I'm 
a bit mystified as to why taking Kerberos support out appeared to fix 
the problem for about 16 hours before the same thing started happening 
again.

The real problem is that there's a JFS bug in linux kernels prior to 
2.6.15 where the directory timestamps don't get updated when a link is 
created within, and apparently that makes Dovecot unable to know when to 
update it's indexes.

Updating to 2.6.16 seems to have fixed things for once and for all.

-- 
Casey Allen Shobe