[Dovecot] Help with new syslog errmsgs

[Timo Sirainen]

On Tue, 2007-06-12 at 22:10 +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> > > Jun 12 11:32:36 mercury mail:err|error dovecot: IMAP(gregory):
> UIDVALIDITY chang
> > > ed (1100532544 -> 1178155834) in mbox file /home/hcrc/gregory/mail/Sent
> > Have no idea what this is about......
> 
> It means that you're using a mix of UW-IMAP, Dovecot and yet another 3rd
> thing that deleted the first message from the mbox file (or all
> messages, or the whole file).

A better explanation:

UIDVALIDITY is stored in X-IMAPbase or X-IMAP header of the first
message in mbox file. This is done by both Dovecot and UW-IMAP (and
Pine). It's also stored in dovecot.index file. It shouldn't normally
change, because if it does it means that client has to download all the
messages for the mailbox again.

So what could cause this:

1. Dovecot accesses Sent mailbox
2a. Sent mailbox gets truncated or the first message gets deleted by
something else than Dovecot or UW-IMAP, losing the X-IMAP* header.
2b. Sent mailbox gets deleted/renamed by something else than Dovecot.
3. Sent mailbox is created and accessed by UW-IMAP, which notices that
the mailbox is missing X-IMAP* header so it assigns a new UIDVALIDITY.
4. Dovecot accesses again the Sent mailbox. UIDVALIDITY in the mbox
file's header doesn't match the one in dovecot.index file. It logs an
error and updates the UIDVALIDITY in its index files to the new one.

This again isn't really an error, but Dovecot doesn't handle it very
nicely currently. I think it fails to open the mailbox for the first
time, but the next time will the succeed (or maybe it was with maildir).
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