[Dovecot] Files Moving From /New to /Cur

[Tony Rutherford]

Steffen Kaiser wrote:
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> On Mon, 18 Jan 2010, Tony Rutherford wrote:
>
>> We have our own delivery pushing messages to the /new and then /cur 
>> folder
>> eventually.  When I have an IMAP client attached, there is apparently 
>> some
>> sort of race going on.  I believe that Dovecot is moving files from 
>> /new to
>> /cur (and renaming them) before our own delivery gets the job done.
>>
>> This is causing a problem for us.  Is there a way to disable this in
>> Dovecot?  I have the LDA section commented out of the config file..so I
>
> No :-) this is part of Maildir
> Well, yes: patch Dovecot's sources.
>
>> don't think that's in play.   Bottom line is that I don't want 
>> Dovecot to
>> move any files around whether an IMAP client is attached or not 
>> (except for
>> handling the IMAP COPY/APPEND).
>
> What are you mean with "move"? The move from "new" to "cur", when the 
> message has been seen? Or the "rename" of the filename for status / 
> keyword change?
>
> ===
>
> Maildir defines the delivery process as:
>
> 1) create the file in "tmp/"
> 2) dump all data into it, hence, close it
> 3) rename() the file into "new" or "cur".
> 4) be done with the file (aka don't try to re-open)
>
> There is no race-condition that way.
>
> Bye,
>
> - -- Steffen Kaiser
>
I'd like to apologize a bit for this thread.  It stems from me being a 
relative newbie to email protocols/specs and who is responsible for 
what.  I think I have it a bit straighter in my mind now.  The real 
issue with our scenario is that the delivery software we have in place 
is breaking spec, and attempting to deliver to /new and then (after 
performing a few actions), rename to /cur.   Long story, but the problem 
is made far worse by the "few actions" that the lda performs...resulting 
in an inconsistent state if the attempted rename to /cur fails because 
the file has already made it to /cur via th MUA.  Anyhow, I have made 
changes on the delivery side as this is where the root of the problem 
lies.  Thanks for the help.

Tony