[Dovecot] Dovecot LDA

[Steven F Siirila]

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 06:18:57PM -0400, Gerard Seibert wrote:
> On Monday 09 October 2006 17:24, Steven F Siirila wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 05:17:39PM -0400, Gerard Seibert wrote:
> > > On Monday 09 October 2006 15:38, Steven F Siirila wrote:
> > > > Using mailbox_command causes an extra (badly-formed) "From " line as
> > > > described previously.  I can't see how anyone could be using this
> > > > successfully with Postfix (I'm running version 2.3.3).
> > >
> > > I have Postfix 2.4-20060930 installed on a FreeBSD 6.1 machine and have
> > > dovecot working as an LDA without problem. This is using an MBOX. The
> > > mail is accessed by several different MUAs and none have complained.
> >
> > Okay, but can you tell me what the first three lines of a mailbox looks
> > like on your system?  Are there TWO "From " lines?  We have mbox-handling
> > scripts at the very least that will break if they start seeing two "From
> > " lines.
> 
> This is the RAW header as it appears in the MBOX:
> 
> 	From dovecot.deliver  Mon Oct 09 17:28:37 2006
> 	From sfs at tc.umn.edu  Mon Oct  9 17:28:37 2006
> 	Return-Path: <sfs at tc.umn.edu>

This matches up with what I'm seeing in our raw mailboxes.

> This is how it looks after being handled by KMail:
> 
> 	From sfs at tc.umn.edu Mon Oct 9 17: 28:37 2006
> 	Return-Path: <sfs at tc.umn.edu>

I verified that this is the case; it appears that Dovecot itself is perhaps
taking only the most-recently-encountered "From_" header when returning the
message to the MUA.

> The extra 'From' header is stripped out either by Dovecot when it is 
> accessed via POP or else by KMail. I have accessed MBOX, actually there are 
> more then one, with different POP clients as well as MUAs without incident.

This is foreign behavior to me, but it does seem that all clients thus far
(even command-line mutt) work fine.  Of course, "mutt" accesses the inbox
directly and does show me BOTH "From_" lines.

> If you have some custom script handling the mail, perhaps you could simply 
> modify it to ignore the first 'From' in the message. Since the header 
> always begins: 'From dovecot.deliver' that should not be that difficult.

We currently have some archival scripts that look for "From_" headers in
order to determine when the next message starts.  We may have to modify them.
It seems that the delimiter between messages should be "\n\nFrom ", not just
"\nFrom " .

Thanks for helping me sort out this mess.  It still seems somewhat broken
for both Postfix and Dovecot to be putting out this header, one of which
doesn't even contain the proper return path.  It would be great if I could
somehow tell Dovecot deliver not to write its "From_" header.

> -- 
> Gerard Seibert
> gerard at seibercom.net
> 
> I am looking for a honest man.
> 
> 	Diogenes the Cynic



-- 

Steven F. Siirila			Office: Lind Hall, Room 130B
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