[Dovecot] Unexpected behaviour when deleteing a big mailbox

[Mark E. Mallett]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2007 at 01:30:07AM +0200, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 23.3.2007, at 19.40, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> 
> >>>>dovecot: Mar 22 13:35:39 Error: IMAP(dvtest) [18381]: Maildir
> >>>>/mnt/mailcache/dvtest/.box1 sync: UID inserted in the middle of  
> >>>>mailbox
> >>>>(16251 > 6588, file = 1174389173.P6520Q1M362610.ux-2s11-9:2,Fdc)
> >>>
> >>>Are you using ext3? I just found a bug in it that could cause  
> >>>this with
> >>>large maildirs.
> >>
> >>Timo, you (and others) may well consider this off-topic, but would  
> >>you
> >>mind telling us more about this ext3 bug? I have some very large ext3
> >>filesystems (not maildirs) and am concerned.
> >
> >http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.ext4/1334
> 
> So not a bug after all, just something I had never heard of before.  

Wow, that is surprising to me too.

FWIW, I also tried this on a couple of FreeBSD systems, with the same
result: in 'rename( from, to )', if to is already the same file as from
(hard link), from is not removed.  OTOH I tried it on an old BSD/OS (4.x)
system, and from *is* removed in that case.  The latter's man page claims
to conform to a 1988 POSIX, whereas the others say 1996.

I wonder what the rationale for that newer behavior is?  It just seems
to complicate things, so I imagine there must be a reason for it.

mm