[Dovecot] Effects of going read-only on dovecot & pop/imap clients

[Mark Zealey]

Hi all,

We need to set our filestore to read-only for quite a while, and I want
to mitigate the effects for our clients. First issue; dovecot. If we
just change the nfs mounts to read-only, dovecot complains:

2009-02-19T14:03:19+00:00 mail2 dovecot: pop3-login: Login:
user=<test2 at markandruth.co.uk>, method=PLAIN, rip=10.15.10.95,
lip=10.15.10.102:11002
2009-02-19T14:03:19+00:00 mail2 dovecot: POP3(test2 at markandruth.co.uk):
open() failed with file
/var/spool/mail/supplier_2/ma/rk/an/markandruth.co.uk/te/st/2_/test2/Mai
ldir/dovecot.index.log: Read-only file system
2009-02-19T14:03:19+00:00 mail2 dovecot: POP3(test2 at markandruth.co.uk):
open(/var/spool/mail/supplier_2/ma/rk/an/markandruth.co.uk/te/st/2_/test
2/Maildir/dovecot-uidlist.lock) failed: Read-only file system
2009-02-19T14:03:19+00:00 mail2 dovecot: POP3(test2 at markandruth.co.uk):
file_dotlock_create(/var/spool/mail/supplier_2/ma/rk/an/markandruth.co.u
k/te/st/2_/test2/Maildir/dovecot-uidlist) failed: Read-only file system
2009-02-19T14:03:19+00:00 mail2 dovecot: POP3(test2 at markandruth.co.uk):
Couldn't init INBOX: Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for
more information. [2009-02-19 14:03:19]
2009-02-19T14:03:19+00:00 mail2 dovecot: POP3(test2 at markandruth.co.uk):
Mailbox init failed bytes=0/95, top=0/0, retr=0/0, del=0/0, size=0

Even when I use :INDEX=MEMORY, it's still complaining about creating
.lock's or uidlist files and just issuing internal errors. Is there any
way to make dovecot just do as much as it can under the circumstances ie
allow read access to mails?

Also, has anyone got experience of how clients handle mailboxes being
read-only? My guess is that pop clients would probably break and
download the same messages over and over?

Thanks,

Mark

--
Mark Zealey -- Shared Hosting Team Leader
Product Development * Webfusion
123-reg.co.uk, webfusion.co.uk, donhost.co.uk, supanames.co.uk

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