[Dovecot] Not getting new mail notification

[Anand Buddhdev]

On Wednesday 13 September 2006 23:29, Dovecot Mailing List wrote:

> Anand Buddhdev wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I don't know the details of dnotify or poll, but if they also
> > depend on metadata updates to detect a change, then they will also
> > fail to work on your system. I think that if you solve the problem
> > of the directory timestamp update, then you'll be alright.
>
> Is it possible that it is being mounted with the 'noatime' flag?

No. The 'noatime' option to mount tells the kernel not to update the 
access time of files (ie. the time that a file is accessed in any way, 
such as read). However, delivery of a new message into a Maildir 
involves the update of the metadata of the directory that the file is 
written into, so the directory's mtime (modification time) is updated. 
This will happen regardless of the 'noatime' mount option.

You can test this for yourself by mounting a file system with 'noatime', 
and then creating a directory called 'test', looking at its mtime by 
running 'ls -l test', waiting a minute, creating a file in it by 
running 'touch test/file' and examining the mtime again by 
running 'ls -l'.

--
Anand