[Dovecot] Mail lost - maybe a bug???

[Marco Carcano]

Hello Timo and Urban, and thank you for the very quick reply

I have already thought about these things: I have already disabled  
mailbox deletion from POP3 clients, that actually just leave the  
messages on the server

however, this time noone of the 4 recipients got the email - so it is  
really strange that all che clients deleted the same message and left  
all the others

we can notice this  only a few days after the issue, because customers  
send us a reminder forwarding the lost mail


Il giorno 17/nov/11, alle ore 18:34, Timo Sirainen ha scritto:

> On 17.11.2011, at 18.47, Marco Carcano wrote:
>
>>>> Oct 27 11:20:34 srv001 dovecot: lda(user3): msgid=<e9447410-51fe-45ff-b624-197840b9a862 at usstlz-pinfez02.emrsn.org
>>>>> : saved mail to INBOX
>>>
>>> If Dovecot logs this, then the message definitely was saved to  
>>> INBOX.
>>
>> it is exactly what I told to my colleagues, but belive me, sometime  
>> some mail get lost -
>
> Most likely reason for this is that the user's client deletes the  
> message. Possibly an automatic client side filter or some UI issue  
> that causes user to accidentally delete a mail. The mail_log  
> plugin's logging would have showed if this was the case.
>
>> I suspect however that could be mine misconfiguration somewhere, so  
>> that lda sometimes write the email not in the right place, but  
>> elsewhere,  and just write the phrase " saved mail to INBOX in the  
>> logs (however I'm wondering why sometimes?!?)
>
> I can't think of any reason why it would randomly write to a wrong  
> place.

maybe something related to LDAP lookups? what can happen if for some  
reason the LDAP server does not reply to the lookup?

Timo, belive to me, I use dovecot since 3 years, and I am one of the  
thousands of happy user,  I really can't explain what is happening on  
this server

I'll do this trial: I'll enable lda debug logging ont a file on a USB  
hard disk - in order to know where exactly messages are stored, and  
enable also maillog too

I'll keep you informed on what I'll find - maybe it will take some  
days, as I told it happens quite seldom

thank you


>
>> I tried to find the missed email in the Maildir, but have not been  
>> able to get it - the commands used are
>>
>> cd /home/mailboxstore/theuser/Maildir
>>
>> grep "6000029222" */* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Drafts/* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Drafts/*/* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Junk/* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Posta\ eliminata/* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Posta\ indesiderata/* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Posta\ inviata/* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Sent/* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Templates/* |grep "RE:"
>> grep "6000029222" .Trash/* |grep "RE:"
>
> Only the grep "6000029222" .Drafts/*/* |grep "RE:" was grepping from  
> mail files. Easier would be just:
>
> grep -r "RE:.*6000029222" .
>
>> I really think is some kind of misconfiguration of mine, may you  
>> help me, please? Just tell me what pieces of config to show (just  
>> not to flood the whole config)
>
> I doubt this is related to configuration.
>
> But you could enable http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Plugins/Lazyexpunge so  
> that messages won't be lost if they are expunged. The next time a  
> message is lost, you would most likely find it from the lazy-expunge  
> namespace. (Then you could write a script that deletes e.g. >1 week  
> old files nightly.)