August 2005 - dovecot

[Dovecot] dovecot + openwebmail
by Peter McEvoy 05 Sep '05

05 Sep '05

Hi, I'm trying to add some sanity to a badly thought out mail system that, for various reasons, cant be fixed from the bottom up at this moment in time. The system is debian sarge, exim 4.5, doing virtual domains and delivering into mboxes in /var/spool/virtual/$domain/$user , there is webmail access and this allows user to create folders in (dont shoot me!) /etc/openwebmail/users/$domain/$username/mail/ , the files in this directory appear to be mboxes in that each mail begins with a From: line, the naming of these files is completely arbitrary. Im trying to add imap access that would ideally give users access to the mail in /var , and also in the openwebmail dirs, though the latter is not essential, just desirable. All mails are owned by user mail. I've installed dovecot-imapd version 0.99.14-1, but if this doesnt have the namespace additions from version 1.0-test, I can easily install that. Reading the wiki, it seems I can achieve this with namespaces, something like namespace private { separator = / inbox = yes prefix = location = mbox:/etc/openwebmail/users/%d/%u/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/virtual/%d/%u } But, Im not quite sure where this would go in the config file, going by the example config you can just shoehorn them into the middle of the file, but I'm not 100% sure... I had been trying to use things like.. default_mail_env = mbox:/var/folders/%d/%u:INBOX=/var/spool/virtual/%d/%u:INDEX=/var/indexes/%d/%n Having created the necessary folders in /var , but I didnt have much success (the authentication part worked straight away using my passwd file), And having read more and been told about namespaces on the irc channel, it seemed like I should go that way anyway. If anyone could give me a steer in the right direction, or even tell me i'm wasting my time (tho dont bother telling me how much better maildir etc is, i know!) Thanks for your time. -- Pete

1 1

[Dovecot] Dovecot 1.0 and ldap; does this combination works?
by Vedran Furac 05 Sep '05

05 Sep '05

Hi! After upgrading from dovecot 0.9.14 to 1.0 crashes immediately after starting when using ldap as userdb and passdb. You can find more information here: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=320388 I'm confused with two users: login_user and auth_user. Witch of them has to be in ldap? If anyone here has a working dovecot+ldap configuration, could he show me his configuration? Regards Vedran

3 5

[Dovecot] "stable" v. "alpha"
by Ben Beuchler 03 Sep '05

03 Sep '05

Is "alpha" the new "-stable"? Should I switch? Gracias! -Ben

4 8

[Dovecot] Weird internaldate behavior with 1.0-test80 and mbox folder
by Jon Roma 03 Sep '05

03 Sep '05

Has anyone else encountered weird date behavior with mbox-style folders? I am nearly ready to bite the bullet and convert my UW imap hierarchy (which is in mbx format) to Dovecot. In so doing, I need to convert each UW-specific mbx-format mailboxes to the more portable mbox format, which Dovecot can read. (This is done with the 'mbxcvt' utility that's part of UW.) I am then planning to copy those mbox-format folders into a staging area in a directory I've defined to Dovecot as a mbox-format namespace. The plan was then to use my normal GUI to reorganize my old data and copy it into proper maildir folders into Dovecot's default namespace. Since I'm naturally paranoid, I did a dry run of a couple folders first and discovered a rather strange anomaly -- all the mail in the converted folder is displayed by Dovecot with a timestamp exactly 200 minutes (3 hours 20 minutes) into the future! Investigating this via telneting to the respective IMAP ports shows that UW imapd shows the correct timestamp both in the original mbx-format folder and the converted mbox-format folder -- so it appears that Dovecot is skewing the time. This doesn't look like a timezone issue since 200 minutes ahead from CST6CDT would be a pretty strange timezone -- not even Newfoundland has this odd a TZ value! :) (For the curious, Newfoundland is a Canadian province whose time zone is TZ=NST3:30NDT, therefore being a half-hour "off" from the rest of North America.) I have distilled this into a degenerate case of a single folder with a single message and can reproduce. As mentioned, I am running 1.0-test80. My platform is AIX 5.1. I created the test by sending a message to myself using date | mail -s "Test at $(date)" roma(a)uiuc.edu and using my MUA (Mulberry) to file it into the test folder, which defaults to mbx format in UW's namespace. Here's what UW shows when I select/fetch the "original" message: * namespace * NAMESPACE (("" "/")("#mhinbox" NIL)("#mh/" "/")) (("~" "/")) (("#shared/" "/")("#ftp/" "/")("#news." ".")("#public/" "/")) * OK NAMESPACE completed * select "~/Test" * 1 EXISTS * 0 RECENT * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1124811965] UID validity status * OK [UIDNEXT 3] Predicted next UID * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Draft \Seen) * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\* \Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Draft \Seen)] Permanent flags * OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed * fetch 1 internaldate * 1 FETCH (INTERNALDATE "23-Aug-2005 11:16:37 -0500") * OK FETCH completed * fetch 1 envelope * 1 FETCH (ENVELOPE ("Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:16:30 -0500" "Test at Tue Aug 23 11:16:29 CDT 2005" (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) ((NIL NIL "roma" "uiuc.edu")) NIL NIL NIL "<200508231616.j7NGGUrc022618(a)zippy.cso.uiuc.edu>")) * OK FETCH completed Next I use the UW 'mbxcvt' to convert the folder, leaving it in mbox format in a different folder (~/Test-mbox) -- still in UW's namespace. Here's what the telnet connection shows: * namespace * NAMESPACE (("" "/")("#mhinbox" NIL)("#mh/" "/")) (("~" "/")) (("#shared/" "/")("#ftp/" "/")("#news." ".")("#public/" "/")) * OK NAMESPACE completed * select "~/Test-mbox" * 1 EXISTS * 1 RECENT * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1124813840] UID validity status * OK [UIDNEXT 2] Predicted next UID * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Draft \Seen) * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\* \Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Draft \Seen)] Permanent flags * OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed * fetch 1 internaldate * 1 FETCH (INTERNALDATE "23-Aug-2005 11:16:37 -0500") * OK FETCH completed * fetch 1 envelope * 1 FETCH (ENVELOPE ("Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:16:30 -0500" "Test at Tue Aug 23 11:16:29 CDT 2005" (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) ((NIL NIL "roma" "uiuc.edu")) NIL NIL NIL "<200508231616.j7NGGUrc022618(a)zippy.cso.uiuc.edu>")) * OK FETCH completed Now, copying the same mbox-format folder into dovecot's namespace and telneting to my Dovecot port gives the following: * namespace * NAMESPACE (("" ".")("Stage/" "/")) NIL NIL * OK Namespace completed. * select "Stage/Test" * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft) * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)] Flags permitted. * 1 EXISTS * 1 RECENT * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1124815188] UIDs valid * OK [UIDNEXT 2] Predicted next UID * OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed. * fetch 1 internaldate * 1 FETCH (INTERNALDATE "23-Aug-2005 14:36:37 -0500") * OK Fetch completed. * fetch 1 envelope * 1 FETCH (ENVELOPE ("Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:16:30 -0500" "Test at Tue Aug 23 11:16:29 CDT 2005" (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) (("Jon Roma" NIL "roma" "zippy.cso.uiuc.edu")) ((NIL NIL "roma" "uiuc.edu")) NIL NIL NIL "<200508231616.j7NGGUrc022618(a)zippy.cso.uiuc.edu>")) * OK Fetch completed. Notice the "internaldate" response. Dovecot reports the correct time zone, but the internaldate value is 200 minutes ahead of what it should be!!! This is an interesting mystery; I seem to be living three hours and 20 minutes in the future. I've attached the entire contents of the mbox-style mailbox that Dovecot misinterprets. Thanks in advance. >From MAILER-DAEMON Tue Aug 23 11:39:48 2005Date: 23 Aug 2005 11:39:48 -0500 From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON(a)zippy.cso.uiuc.edu> Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA X-IMAP: 1124815188 0000000001 Status: RO This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system software. If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created with the data reset to initial values. >From roma(a)zippy.cso.uiuc.edu Tue Aug 23 11:16:37 2005 -0500 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: via dmail-4.1(10) for +INBOX; Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:16:37 -0500 (CDT) Return-Path: <roma(a)zippy.cso.uiuc.edu> Received: from zippy.cso.uiuc.edu (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cso.uiuc.edu (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id j7NGGUCQ027294 for <roma(a)uiuc.edu>; Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:16:30 -0500 Received: (from roma@localhost) by zippy.cso.uiuc.edu (8.12.10/8.12.10/Submit) id j7NGGUrc022618 for roma(a)uiuc.edu; Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:16:30 -0500 Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:16:30 -0500 From: Jon Roma <roma(a)zippy.cso.uiuc.edu> Message-Id: <200508231616.j7NGGUrc022618(a)zippy.cso.uiuc.edu> To: roma(a)uiuc.edu Subject: Test at Tue Aug 23 11:16:29 CDT 2005 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.1 (2004-10-22) on zippy.cso.uiuc.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-5.9 required=2.5 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.1 X-UID: 1 Tue Aug 23 11:16:29 CDT 2005

2 2

Re: [Dovecot] Oddities with Debian unstable dovecot
by Lisandro Grullon 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

whaooo that is interesting, Thank you so much for the explanation. I guess my choice now is to go with maildir as Blairpoint out because I am running in single host mode. Probably in the future I will run a big enough enviroment as a cluster data center them I will op for mbox. Thank you again Blair and Tomi for educating me in the topic.Lisandro ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lisandro Grullon New York City College of Technology Division of Continuing Education Director of Network Operations Lisandro Office: 1718-552-1178 Lisandro E-mail: lgrullon(a)citytech.cuny.edu "Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are." >>> Tomi Hakala <tomi.hakala(a)clinet.fi> 08/31/05 3:08 PM >>> Lisandro Grullon wrote: > What method for mail boxes are you guys using mbox or maildir and which one > would you recommend? Thanks. I'd say it depends, I'm working with clustered filesystems in SAN environments where mbox is significantly faster than maildir since single mbox file generates much less overhead in form of distributed file locking accross cluster nodes. On single host systems with good file system I'd probably go with maildir. Maybe someday I'll manage to do some benchmarking between mbox and maildir with Dovecot. -- Tomi Hakala

1 0

Re: [Dovecot] Oddities with Debian unstable dovecot
by Lisandro Grullon 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

What method for mail boxes are you guys using mbox or maildir and which one would you recommend? Thanks. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lisandro Grullon New York City College of Technology Division of Continuing Education Director of Network Operations Lisandro Office: 1718-552-1178 Lisandro E-mail: lgrullon(a)citytech.cuny.edu "Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are." >>> Blair Zajac <blair(a)orcaware.com> 08/31/05 12:43 PM >>> Tomi Hakala wrote: > Blair Zajac wrote: > >>dovecot: Aug 30 13:14:06 Error: IMAP(ashley): Corrupted index cache file >>/home/ashley/Maildir/dovecot.index.cache: record points outside file > > > Please try lastest CVS version, there are fixes for indexing > code which resolves this problem. > Thanks. I'll give that a shot. Regards, Blair

2 1

Re: [Dovecot] Oddities with Debian unstable dovecot
by Blair Zajac 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

Lisandro Grullon wrote: > What method for mail boxes are you guys using mbox or maildir and which one would you recommend? Thanks. I use maildir because it stores each message in a separate file. So this gets me: 1) Daily backups of a ~/Maildir are much smaller than a large mbox because most files don't change, while a single change to a large mbox file will require the entire mbox to be backed up. 2) Moving emails from folder to folder is much faster, as it's moving a single file and you don't have to delete an email from a middle of a mbox file. I have a 5 year old 450 Mhz Dell that easily and quickly manages over 2 Gbytes of email for several users. Regards, Blair

1 0

[Dovecot] Oddities with Debian unstable dovecot
by Blair Zajac 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

Hello, I'm running an Debian etch box with unstable and ever since the last upgrade to dovecot, I've seen odd things. At times, I would see emails would go missing from the Inbox or other folders, and I couldn't move emails that were moved from the Inbox to another folder back into the Inbox. These have seen gone away since I removed all dovecot.* files and .index* files from my Maildir's and let Dovecot regenerate them as needed. The most current thing are these errors: dovecot: Aug 30 11:38:33 Error: IMAP(blair): file mail-transaction-log-view.c: l ine 183 (mail_transaction_log_view_set): assertion failed: (max_file_offset == ( uoff_t)-1 || max_file_offset <= file->sync_offset) dovecot: Aug 30 13:05:21 Info: imap-login: Login: ashley [127.0.0.1] dovecot: Aug 30 13:14:06 Error: IMAP(ashley): Corrupted index cache file /home/ashley/Maildir/dovecot.index.cache: record points outside file Anything I can do to help here? I don't have a core file, even though I have 'mail_drop_priv_before_exec = yes'. The other odd thing I noticed is after running /etc/init.d/dovecot stop, I would have several imap processes left over in my uid. They don't do much: # strace -p 5014 Process 5014 attached - interrupt to quit gettimeofday({1125460345, 997748}, {420, 0}) = 0 gettimeofday({1125460345, 998465}, NULL) = 0 poll([{fd=8, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI|POLLERR|POLLHUP|POLLNVAL}, {fd=0, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI|POLLERR|POLLHUP|POLLNVAL}], 2, 410) = 0 gettimeofday({1125460346, 410768}, {420, 0}) = 0 gettimeofday({1125460346, 410890}, NULL) = 0 poll([{fd=8, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI|POLLERR|POLLHUP|POLLNVAL}, {fd=0, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI|POLLERR|POLLHUP|POLLNVAL}], 2, 0) = 0 gettimeofday({1125460346, 411940}, {420, 0}) = 0 gettimeofday({1125460346, 412551}, NULL) = 0 However, lsof shows that the file descriptor 8 is a pipe back to fd 9 in the same process. Why would poll() be polling it's own file descriptor? Is this normal? Is this process waiting to do a fork later on and communicate with a child? # lsof -p 5014 COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME imap 5014 blair cwd DIR 8,4 4096 6619138 /home/blair imap 5014 blair rtd DIR 8,4 4096 2 / imap 5014 blair txt REG 8,4 420168 4572306 /usr/lib/dovecot/imap imap 5014 blair mem REG 0,0 0 [heap] (stat: No such file or directory) imap 5014 blair mem REG 8,4 1178624 6636723 /home/blair/Maildir/dovecot.index.cache imap 5014 blair mem REG 8,4 20148 6636742 /home/blair/Maildir/dovecot.index imap 5014 blair mem REG 8,4 1265136 6996193 /lib/tls/libc-2.3.5.so imap 5014 blair mem REG 8,4 9592 6996195 /lib/tls/libdl-2.3.5.so imap 5014 blair mem REG 8,4 21568 6636721 /home/blair/Maildir/dovecot.index.log imap 5014 blair mem REG 8,4 88924 6995972 /lib/ld-2.3.5.so imap 5014 blair 0u IPv4 160155 TCP localhost.localdomain:imap2->localhost.localdomain:47852 (ESTABLISHED) imap 5014 blair 1u IPv4 160155 TCP localhost.localdomain:imap2->localhost.localdomain:47852 (ESTABLISHED) imap 5014 blair 2w FIFO 0,5 160165 pipe imap 5014 blair 3r CHR 1,9 16396 /dev/urandom imap 5014 blair 4u REG 8,4 1178624 6636723 /home/blair/Maildir/dovecot.index.cache imap 5014 blair 5r DIR 8,4 77824 6930433 /home/blair/Maildir/new imap 5014 blair 6r DIR 8,4 118784 6900850 /home/blair/Maildir/cur imap 5014 blair 8r FIFO 0,5 160244 pipe imap 5014 blair 9w FIFO 0,5 160244 pipe imap 5014 blair 10u REG 8,4 20148 6636742 /home/blair/Maildir/dovecot.index imap 5014 blair 11u REG 8,4 21568 6636721 /home/blair/Maildir/dovecot.index.log Regards, Blair -- Blair Zajac, Ph.D. <blair(a)orcaware.com> Subversion and Orca training and consulting http://www.orcaware.com/svn/

2 2

[Dovecot] dovecot/pop-before-smtp
by Micah Stevens 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

Hi, This is off-topic I know, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. I'm running postfix 2.2.x, dovecot 0.99, and it's working great, I wanted pop-before-smtp functionality, so I fired up the suggested perl daemon in the dovecot docs.. This seems to work, I ran tests, it was picking up the ip's, putting them in the .db file, and postfix was able to read them. My issue is that it doesn't seem to continue to do this. It only works if I force it with a --reprocess flag. At that point, the latest set of ip's get inserted in the database, and all is well. Any ideas? I did check to make sure the daemon is running, and it is. Thanks! -Micah

2 1

[Dovecot] Dovecot default inbox name?
by Andy Cravens 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

I'm installing dovecot and migrating from mbox to maildir. I've read several articles concerning this process but I can't seem to find the answer to one particular question. What is the default name of the inbox when using maildir format? I need to create this in advance for each user and I don't know what dovecot is expecting for the inbox directory name. -- Andy Cravens

2 1