[Dovecot] Lock file issues

[Paul Hamby]

On Sun, 2007-04-08 at 12:06 +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 3.4.2007, at 21.05, Paul Hamby wrote:
> 
> > We are running 1.0.rc28 on three servers with 3 Horde/IMP boxes  
> > talking
> > to Dovecot.  The user's home dirs are located on an NFS server
> > and the indexes are stored in their Maildirs. I have mmap_disable=yes
> > and lock_method=dotlock in dovecot.conf. We have not implemented
> > anything to direct users to the same server as is recommended per the
> > Wiki. I have been trying to avoid this, as the best way I could see to
> > do
> > it would be to put in an IMAP proxy (Perdition?) and I just wanted to
> > keep it as simple as possible if I could.
> 
> And I guess you didn't disable attribute cache either?

I was concerned about the performance hit it would take doing this. I
will set actimeo=0 on the nfs mounts and monitor the logs for errors to
see if this helps while not killing performance.

> 
> > The problems we have been having are due to dovecot.*.lock files not
> > being cleaned up. This issue presents itself as a user not being  
> > able to
> > login via the webmail interface. The logfile will contain something
> > similar to the following:
> ..
> > Apr  3 08:37:51 app02 dovecot: IMAP(user): Corrupted transaction log
> > file /mail_home3/j/ji/user/Maildir/dovecot.index.log: end_offset  
> > (23440)
> >> current sync_offset (23368)
> > Apr  3 08:37:51 app02 dovecot: IMAP(user): file
> > mail-index-sync-update.c: line 40 (mail_index_sync_update_log_offset):
> > assertion failed: (prev_offset >= map->hdr.log_file_int_offset ||
> > prev_seq > map->hdr.log_file_seq)
> 
> Hmm. I guess I should change this assert to instead just log an error  
> and return failure, because it's what leaves the lock files lying  
> around.
> 

Will this change be in an upcoming RC?

> But anyway I don't think it's a good idea to keep using this kind of  
> a configuration where things break all the time..

Understood, there are just some added complexities to consider in the
IMAP proxy scenario, such as the changes needed for adding, editing and
deleting user accounts and the necessary changes to our LDAP config. It
is something I will have to give more thought/time to.

Thanks for your reply.

Paul