[Dovecot] Mail.app IDLE support

[Nikolay Shopik]

On 15.11.2007 23:08, Martin R. Ehmsen wrote:
>
> On 14/11/2007, at 14.21, Jason Fesler wrote:
>
>>> Any hint on how to use tcpdump to only grab the interesting parts?
>>
>> tcpdump port 143
>>
>> or whatever.
>>
>>> My knowledge of tcpdump is very limited and I only seem to be able 
>>> to get a lot of noise out of it.
>>
>> Look at ngrep - it lets you use both tcpdump expressions, *and* 
>> further filter by regular expression.  And, it shows ascii output 
>> instead of all the hex crap - makes it a lot easier to follow ascii 
>> based protocols.
>>
>> Either way, you'll want to disable SSL on the client, so that you can 
>> see the traffic properly. :-)
>
> I installed dovecot 1.0.7 on my leopard laptop, disabled SSL and 
> started it on the loopback device.
> Then I connected to it from Mail.app using IMAP and the IDLE option in 
> Mail.app, while running:
>
> tcpdump -A -s 0 -i lo0 'tcp port imap and (((ip[2:2] - 
> ((ip[0]&0xf)<<2)) - ((tcp[12]&0xf0)>>2)) != 0)' > dump.txt
>
> Here is what initially came out of the dump:
>
> <cut a lot of stuff>
>
> 14:46:52.589999 IP localhost.50770 > localhost.imap: P 394:404(10) ack 
> 1237 win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 497198901 497198901>
> E..>.. at .@............R...V?2(k.......2.....
> ...5...57.2 IDLE
>
> 14:46:52.590346 IP localhost.imap > localhost.50770: P 1237:1247(10) 
> ack 404 win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 497198901 497198901>
> E..>    . at .@..............R(k...V?<.....2.....
> ...5...5+ idling
>
> 14:46:57.448879 IP localhost.imap > localhost.50777: P 
> 355780982:355781003(21) ack 2104750877 win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 
> 497198950 497198950>
> E..I.. at .@..............Y.4.v}s.......=.....
> ...f...f* OK Dovecot ready.
>
> 14:46:57.459450 IP localhost.50777 > localhost.imap: P 1:17(16) ack 21 
> win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 497198950 497198950>
> E..D.. at .@............Y..}s...4.......8.....
> ...f...f1.6 CAPABILITY
>
> 14:46:57.459654 IP localhost.imap > localhost.50777: P 21:187(166) ack 
> 17 win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 497198950 497198950>
> E..... at .@..............Y.4..}s.-...........
> ...f...f* CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SASL-IR SORT THREAD=REFERENCES 
> MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS 
> AUTH=PLAIN
> 1.6 OK Capability completed.
>
> <and a lot of more stuff and finally it came to a halt>
>
> 14:46:57.542907 IP localhost.imap > localhost.50772: P 449:525(76) ack 
> 209 win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 497198951 497198951>
> E...w. at .@..............T.E....o`.....t.....
> ...g...g* STATUS "Deleted Messages" (UIDNEXT 3 UNSEEN 0)
> 7.3 OK Status completed.
>
> 14:48:52.590857 IP localhost.imap > localhost.50770: P 1247:1264(17) 
> ack 404 win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 497200094 497198901>
> E..EI. at .@..............R(k...V?<.....9.....
> .......5* OK Still here
>
> 14:50:52.590661 IP localhost.imap > localhost.50770: P 1264:1281(17) 
> ack 404 win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 497201286 497200094>
> E..E.. at .@..............R(k...V?<.....9.....
> ........* OK Still here
>
> 14:52:52.590964 IP localhost.imap > localhost.50770: P 1281:1298(17) 
> ack 404 win 65535 <nop,nop,timestamp 497202478 497201286>
> E..E.. at .@..............R(k...V?<.....9.....
> ........* OK Still here
>
>
> The above shows the only time IDLE is every used (except when Mail.app 
> asks for the capabilities of the server).
> Somewhere after 14:46:57, but before 14:48:52, I copied (since I have 
> no SMTP server running on my laptop) a new mail into the new directory 
> of the maildir I subscribed to. But as you can see from the above, 
> somehow dovecot failed to notice the new mail.
> I don't use (d/i)notify or kqueue, but I did set dovecot up to check 
> every 30 sec, which it obviously didn't.
> Btw. the mail arrives fine if I manually check for new mail in Mail.app.
>
> I can provide the full dump above if anybody thinks it is going to be 
> useful?
> Martin

Mail client usually should open few connection to mail server if you 
have many dirs.