[Dovecot] Duplicate E-mail Problem

[Stewart Dean]

When this happens with sendmail, it can be that the queue handler 
doesn't finish before a new queue handler is kicked off, so each 
successive queue handler/runner ends up sending the same mail.
Background: sendmail, and perhaps postfix, is configured to a) toss 
stuff it can't handle right away into the queue and then, every so often 
(interval to be set by admin), it burps the queue.  If the interval is 
too short, the previous queue handler/runner doesn't complete before a 
new one is invoked and gets it list of things to mail...with the same 
email on both queue handler/runners incarnations to do list...........

Phillip T. George wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Definitely congrats on the 1.0.0 release!
>
> Anyway, I'm having a problem, that may or may not be related to 
> Dovecot.  Specifically, duplicate (and sometimes triplicate) emails 
> are appearing.  These emails have exactly the same queue ID, so its 
> not that they were sent multiple times.  These dup emails do not show 
> up to me ever.
>
> Postfix is being used as the SMTP, and it hands it over to procmail.  
> I set up procmail's verbose logging feature for that user and on the 
> duplicate emails that he receives, it shows only ONE write to a file 
> for that specific subject of email.  Tonight / this morning I'll be 
> tracking down to see if this duplicate for sure happens in IMAP.
>
> Note: Its possible that part of the problem is he leaves two IMAP 
> clients open at the same time (Netscape I think).  I'm going to verify 
> that with him.
>
> Any ideas?  I'm NOT trying to blame Dovecot, I'm just trying to 
> explore options.  Right now its looking fairly bad for Dovecot 
> though....I mean, what else is there after the mail is delivered to 
> the appropriate place in the mailbox?
>
> Software versions:
> postfix 2.3.8
> procmail 3.22
> dovecot 1.0.rc28
>
> Thanks,
> Phillip

-- 
====
Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources 
Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York  12504  
sdean at bard.edu  voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035