[Dovecot] Error messages in log

[Peter Bell]

Thank you to you, Timo, and to Thomas, for you helpful replies!

On Wednesday, 11 May, 2011 05:42 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 11.5.2011, at 6.35, Peter Bell wrote:
>
>> However, I also get a lot of:
>> lda(peter): Error: User peter doesn't have home dir set, disabling duplicate database
>> Is there a way to eliminate/supress these messages?  I'm operating with virtual users, so checking for a home directory doesn't make a lot of sense. Is there a setting in the .conf file which can control this?
>
> http://wiki2.dovecot.org/VirtualUsers/Home

Ah, thanks for that pointer - I seem to have missed that page in my 
enthusiasm to get Dovecot up and running in my Slackware environment.

Perhaps I simply ignored mention of 'home' directories in my belief that 
they didn't apply to a virtual user situation.

I will have a go at restructuring things.

>> Possibly more concerning is this message:
>> May 10 23:31:23 imap(peter): Error: link(/mnt/user/Maildir/peter/dovecot.index.log, /mnt/user/Maildir/peter/dovecot.index.log.2) failed: Function not implemented
>
> So apparently your fuse filesystem doesn't support link().

That is correct.  This system is, essentially, a parity-protected file 
server, with logical file space which spans physical devices.  However, 
the big benefit of the system is that, unlike most RAID configurations, 
each physical drive can be mounted individually and the filesystem 
(ReiserFS) written/read in isolation.  I suspect that, technically, it 
would be possible to add link(), but I guess that the conflation of 
stand-alone drive/logical spanning makes it a little complex.  I will 
try starting a discussion on this topic over on the 'other' forum.
Anyway, having been badly bitten by a RAID system which fell over and 
failed to respond to any of the prescribed recovery procedures, some 
years ago, I feel more comfortable with this solution.  The system will 
recover from any single drive failure and,even if more than one drive 
fails simultaneously, I can still recover all files on the remaining drives.

>> I'm not sure exactly what I was doing at the time - probably experimenting with Sieve filters.  Has this compromised my maildir?  I have already disabled copy with hard links - is there another 'hardlink' setting available?
>
> Nope. I don't remember what all places uses link(), but looks like at least copying .log to .log.2 file. It doesn't really matter if it fails though.

Okay, so I'm guessing that this is simply a rollover log file - one 
file, reaching a certain size is renamed [linked], and a new log file 
started?  When I have a little spare time I may try grepping the Dovecot 
code.

-- 
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Peter Bell                                Mob: +63 (0) 9287 340 343
Tagum City, Philippines.                  Tel: +63 (0) 84 400 5085
email/msn: peter at bellfamily.org.uk        Tel: +44 (0) 118 331 0000