[Dovecot] Weird mirgration problem

[Stewart Dean]

Most likely non-Dovecot, but I'd appreciate any comments on WTF might be 
going on here.
Preparatory to migration from mbox to maildir format on our AIX mail 
server, I am migrating from the JFS filesystem (being deprecated by IBM) 
to JFS2 to better handling the jump in the number of files.
Two nights ago, I took the first step and migrated the IT homedir 
filesystem: copied it to a scratch disk, melted down the FS and 
recreated it as a JFS2 FS.  In order to keep changes from happening to 
it during this process, I killed off DC (dovecot -n ouput is appended to 
bottom of this note) and dropped the export of the FS.  The bringup was 
a little ragged due to time constraints and the fact that I had trouble 
re-establishing the export.  FWIW, the homedirs and Inobx FSes are 
mounted by a majordomo mailing list server.
Everything went fine except for an anomaly with old pre-existing mailing 
list emails in my INBOX and that of a few others.  Note that the inbox 
FS wasn't touched by this process, just the homedir FS for the IT 
department.  What happened there was that the mbox headers went from 
looking like this:

  From owner-hcrcstaff  Mon Aug 24 14:53:29 2009

 >From majordom  Mon Aug 24 14:53:29 2009
  the rest of the normal header here

To looking like this:

  From owner-hcrcstaff  Mon Aug 24 14:53:29 2009
  Status: RO
  X-UID: 871476     
  Content-Length: 1915

  >From majordom  Mon Aug 24 14:53:29 2009
  normal header lines here

It appears that the Status, X-UID and Content-Length lines were inserted 
just under the top line of the header in every old mailing list mailing 
email header...and not in any other mailing
As a result of this,
= these emails appear in the email client's TOC listing with blank 
Sender and Subject fields, even though the data for that is properly in 
the header further down
= This happens both in TBird and Horde webmail.
= All these emails (some 300, going back to 2008) are listed in one 
block, in proper order for their actual date, as having the datestamp of 
5AM, when I was bringing everything back up.  Unfortunately, because of 
time pressures, I can say exactly what I was doing then.
= I never took down my TBird session while doing this process...and I 
imagine that others, who haven't said anything and presumably didn't 
have this problem, left their TBird or IMAP email client up...

Does this anomaly bring to mind anything to you?

FWIW, I plan on doing the students' homedir FS early tomorrow morning.  
This time I'll be more scrupulous about tracking things AND I will take 
down the mailing list and login servers to remove the possibility that 
they had something to do with this...

dovecot -n output

# 1.1.15: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf
# OS: AIX 3 0001378F4C00  
listen: *:143
ssl_listen: *:993
disable_plaintext_auth: no
verbose_ssl: yes
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable: /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_processes_count: 12
login_max_processes_count: 774
max_mail_processes: 1024
verbose_proctitle: yes
first_valid_uid: 200
mail_location: mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u:INDEX=/var/dcindx/%u
mbox_write_locks: fcntl
mbox_dirty_syncs: no
auth default:
  passdb:
    driver: pam
  userdb:
    driver: passwd



-- 
==== Once upon a time, the Internet was a friendly, 
neighbors-helping-neighbors small town, and no one locked their doors. 
Now it's like an apartment in Bed-Stuy: you need three heavy duty 
pick-proof locks, one of those braces that goes from the lock to the 
floor, and bars on the windows.... ==== Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, 
Bard College, New York 12504 sdean at bard.edu voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 
845-758-7035