[Dovecot] Dovecot 1.1.1 killed with SIGABRT

[Andreas M. Kirchwitz]

Hi folks,

with Dovecot 1.1.1, I've had two "crashes" (SIGABRT) recently.
Dovecot 1.1.1 has been compiled from source and is running
on Fedora 8 Linux 32 Bit (all patches) with custom OpenSSL 0.9.8h.

[ output of "dovecot -n" ]
# 1.1.1: /usr/local/dovecot/etc/dovecot.conf
ssl_cert_file: /usr/local/dovecot/etc/dovecot.crt
ssl_key_file: /usr/local/dovecot/etc/dovecot.key
login_dir: /usr/local/dovecot/var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable: /usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
mail_location: mbox:~/Mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u
auth default:
  mechanisms: plain login digest-md5 cram-md5
  passdb:
    driver: passwd-file
    args: /usr/local/dovecot/etc/dovecot.passwd
  userdb:
    driver: passwd-file
    args: /usr/local/dovecot/etc/dovecot.passwd

First, the "small" problem with Pine 4.64:

Jul 20 03:17:04 linux dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<user1>, method=CRAM-MD5, rip=138.201.2.8, lip=138.201.2.2, TLS
Jul 20 03:17:53 linux dovecot: IMAP(user1): UIDVALIDITY changed (1215137127 -> 1216072777) in mbox file /home/user1/Mail/Trash
Jul 20 03:17:53 linux dovecot: Panic: IMAP(user1): file mail-index-transaction.c: line 548 (mail_index_transaction_get_next_uid): assertion failed: (recs[count-1].uid >= next_uid)
Jul 20 03:17:53 linux dovecot: IMAP(user1): Raw backtrace: imap [0x80cf2f0] -> imap [0x80cf34a] -> imap [0x80cec5c] -> imap [0x80ad621] -> imap [0x80ae56b] -> imap(mail_cache_get_first_new_seq+0x12) [0x80a1d82] -> imap(mail_cache_field_want_add+0x8d) [0x80a555d] -> imap(index_mail_parse_header_init+0x1cc) [0x80964ac] -> imap(index_mail_cache_parse_init+0x4e) [0x809696e] -> imap(mbox_save_init+0x457) [0x807d4a7] -> imap(mailbox_save_init+0x51) [0x809fd71] -> imap(mail_storage_copy+0xc1) [0x809df31] -> imap(cmd_copy+0x1d2) [0x805b1f2] -> imap(cmd_uid+0x59) [0x805f489] -> imap [0x805fe2c] -> imap [0x805fed5] -> imap [0x8060695] -> imap(client_input+0x5e) [0x80608ae] -> imap(io_loop_handler_run+0x100) [0x80d6c30] -> imap(io_loop_run+0x28) [0x80d5dc8] -> imap(main+0x4a1) [0x80683d1] -> /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0) [0x149390] -> imap [0x805a211]
Jul 20 03:17:53 linux dovecot: child 19853 (imap) killed with signal 6

The user didn't configure his Pine properly. He used IMAP to access
his INBOX, but he forgot to configure this for all other folders as
well. Now, Pine modified /home/user1/Mail/Trash directly, and when
Dovecot stumbled upon this file it killed itself with signal 6.

The problem is not reproducible. After this single failure,
Dovecot doesn't seem to have any problems with the folder.

However, instead of this panic operation, Dovecot maybe could issue a
warning or error response to the client so that the user (hopefully)
gets a clue about what's going wrong.

Second, the "big" problem with Thunderbird 2.0.0.14:

Jul 12 01:04:06 linux dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<user2>, method=CRAM-MD5, rip=138.201.2.4, lip=138.201.2.2, TLS
Jul 12 01:04:45 linux dovecot: Panic: IMAP(user2): file index-sync.c: line 39 (index_mailbox_set_recent_uid): assertion failed: (seq_range_exists(&ibox->recent_flags, uid))
Jul 12 01:04:45 linux dovecot: IMAP(user2): Raw backtrace: imap [0x80cf2f0] -> imap [0x80cf34a] -> imap [0x80cec5c] -> imap [0x809ccba] -> imap [0x8080d10] -> imap(mbox_sync+0x522) [0x80817d2] -> imap [0x807a334] -> imap(index_transaction_commit+0x4e) [0x809d99e] -> imap(cmd_copy+0x35f) [0x805b37f] -> imap(cmd_uid+0x59) [0x805f489] -> imap [0x805fe2c] -> imap [0x805fed5] -> imap [0x8060695] -> imap(client_input+0x5e) [0x80608ae] -> imap(io_loop_handler_run+0x100) [0x80d6c30] -> imap(io_loop_run+0x28) [0x80d5dc8] -> imap(main+0x4a1) [0x80683d1] -> /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0) [0x149390] -> imap [0x805a211]
Jul 12 01:04:45 linux dovecot: child 25672 (imap) killed with signal 6
[happens over and over in an endless loop until Thunderbird is killed]

This has been a nasty one. Different user, different mail client.

INBOX with 350 messages in total, 3 of them new. Started Thunderbird,
index page is displayed fine, then clicked on one of the 3 new messages
to read it. For no apparent reason, Dovecot dies with signal 6.
Thunderbird reconnected automatically, and then Dovecot dies again.
Nice endless loop ...

Stopping and restarting the complete Dovecot subsystem with the help
of the init.d script didn't help. Finally the crashes stopped after
removing the cache files in /home/fubar/Mail/.imap/INBOX.

It's obvious that the cache files got corrupted somehow. There was
plenty of disk space free. And the cache files have been freshly
created from scratch with Dovecot 1.1.0. Other folders were not
affected. Except Dovecot, nobody ever touches these cache files.

Well, the good news is, it stopped crashing after removing the cache
files. The bad news is, without the cache files (which I removed)
the problem cannot be reproduced.

So, there's nothing more to offer than these two backtraces. Both
crashes are not related to each other and happened to different users
with different clients.

Maybe the backtraces and my descriptions help to find what's
going wrong or how to make Dovecot behave more robustly. If there's
any additional information needed, please let me know. Sorry that I
didn't save the corrupted cache files.

	Greetings, Andreas