January 2006 - dovecot

[Dovecot] Using mbox INBOX with Maildirs?
by Mark Winslow 22 Mar '06

22 Mar '06

Thanks for everybody's tips on the mbox to maildirs converter. I was unaware that Maildirs was a common format not specific to dovecot, so I was searching using a dovecot keyword. I'm having this problem now with inboxes. I want to use maildirs, but my mail is delivered to an mbox. I can't seem to get dovecot to recognize the inbox location. Is something like: maildir:%h/Maildir:INBOX=/var/mail/%u impossible to use? What I'm trying to do is slowly merge people from mboxes to maildirs, so I have to use the passwd file per user maildirs settings with some sort of recognizeable inbox. I'm using sendmail as my mail server. Do I have to tell that to put the mail in the right inbox format? Thanks. __________________________________ Discover Yahoo! Find restaurants, movies, travel and more fun for the weekend. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/weekend.html

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RE: [Dovecot] IMAP login name conversion
by Zoong Pham 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

> -----Original Message----- > From: Timo Sirainen [mailto:tss@iki.fi] > Sent: Tuesday, 1 June 2004 9:39 PM > To: Zoong Pham > Cc: dovecot(a)dovecot.org > Subject: Re: [Dovecot] IMAP login name conversion > > What passdb and userdb do you use? Unless you're authenticating from > SQL you probably have to modify the source. Let me explain: My server runs OpenBSD-3.5 and Sendmail. We host few virtual domains. Local accounts have login names in this format: login-domain_abc_xyz For example: joedirt-joedomain_com_au, info-adomain_com, info-otherdomain_com That way login accounts are unique across all the virtual domains. I use the OpenBSD pre-compiled dovecot-0.99.10p2. It is set to use "auth_passdb = passwd" and "auth_userdb = passwd" I can use mutt to access my mailbox via IMAPS with login name format joedirt-joedomain_com_au. Other users use different MUA like Outlook and prefer to login with their email addresses (joedirt(a)joedomain.com.au, info(a)adomain.com, info(a)otherdomain.com) We use squirrelmail for webmail. I modified squirrelmail to automatically convert login name from format of joedirt(a)joedomain.com.au to joedirt-joedomain_com_au. So if users use squirrelmail, they can just login with their email addresses. My question is how to achieve the same thing with other MUAs like Outlook? Do I have to modify dovecot source? Can I use LDAP or SQL instead? Note that we are using Sendmail and prefer it than othe MTA. I have looked at the Wiki, specially the "DovecotOpenLdap" but am still confused. Thanks Zoong

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[Dovecot] dovecot memory consumption beta vs. old "stable" series
by Gunter Ohrner 21 Feb '06

21 Feb '06

Hi! I just wanted to know if anyone can give a definitive answer if dovecot beta's memory requirements are much better than in the old pre-alpha "stable" series? I'm using a rather old stable.20050712 release on an also rather old Debian Sarge box to manage my personal mails. I'm pretty satisfied with this dovecot release but it's memory consumption when deleting messages causes major troubles on this box - more than 500 MB of virtual memory allocated to the "imap" process is quite a lot and often causes random processes to fall victim to the OOM killer. :-( Adding even more swap space also is no viable option. (The system has 64 MB RAM and currently about 650 MB swap space.) So, would it be worth a try to install dovecot beta2 or something when it's released, or won't it help in this regard? I won't want to sacrificy the otherwise well working installation, if dovecot beta2 isn't guaranteed to help I'll continue to monitor available memory and swap space while cleaning up my spams... Greetings, Gunter -- +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ + http://aachen.uni-dsl.de/ - Der direkte Draht in's Hochschulnetz! + +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "What do people like to drink here, then?" The landlord looked sideways at his customers, a clever trick given that they were directly in front of him. -- Mort goes out for a drink (Terry Pratchett, Mort) +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ + PGP-verschlüsselte Mails bevorzugt! + +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

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[Dovecot] Dovecot-1.0.beta1: New mail sometimes fails to appear
by Tom Alsberg 14 Feb '06

14 Feb '06

Hi there... Having updated to 1.0.beta1, I for a while thought a bad bug with IDLE handling that caused new mail in INBOX not to appear when using Mozilla Thunderbird has been solved. Although I can not reproduce one kind of problem anymore, after a short while it again appears that one does not always see one's new mail with Thunderbird. I can not consistently reproduce the bug, but from some network captures it indeed appears that sometimes Thunderbird has (in one of its connections to the server) INBOX SELECTed and IDLE on it, new mail arrives, but 10 minutes afterwards it was still not sent an EXISTS message. Initially the symptoms appeared to suggest that something really bad happened to the index files, but I tried INDEX=MEMORY and that did not help much. Thunderbird using multiple connections to the server does of course only make debugging more difficult. But it appears that without multiple connections, one has to constantly cycle around SELECTing to get notified on more than one mailbox, so that may justified. I am a bit lost on this now, and would appreciate some ideas. Although there were several related bugs I noticed in Thunderbird 1.0, it appears that they are gone in 1.5, and yet now it really seems Dovecot is doing something wrong here. Attached is the configuration file I use for the testing installation of Dovecot 1.0.beta1 (somebody tell me if you see something wrong there). The mailbox arrangement is as follows, right now (until we have a better way): * INBOX in /var/mail/%u * most mailboxes in ~/imap.maildir/... as maildirs. * mboxes in ~/imap.mbox/... accessible as #imap.mbox/... * the mbox:~/mail/ is for when namespaces are not used - now there are so it should not be relevant Except for myself, and one test account I have, I have two guinea-pigs using it (who are well aware that it is still under development and that it will break once in a while) and reporting problems to me. Vaguely (since I can't figure the exact reasons), the symptom can be described as follows: When using Mozilla Thunderbird to access mail, new mail arrives to INBOX (mbox:/var/mail/%u), but is sometimes not seen for a long while after it arrives. Sometimes the first (or first few) message arriving appears, but then no new messages appear, and sometimes everything works right and immediately new mail is seen. However whenever (according to Thunderbird) something changes in the mailbox, the mailbox is seen up-to-date as it really was at that time. Thanks, any help appreciated, -- Tom -- Tom Alsberg - hacker (being the best description fitting this space) Web page: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~alsbergt/ DISCLAIMER: The above message does not even necessarily represent what my fingers have typed on the keyboard, save anything further. # Dovecot IMAP server configuration at CS.HUJI ############################################## # # $Id$ # GENERAL PARAMETERS: ##################### # Base directory where to store runtime data: base_dir = /var/run/dovecot # Protocols we want to be serving: protocols = imap pop3 # IP or host address where to listen in for connections: listen = * ssl_disable = yes # LOGIN PROCESSES: ################## # Directory for authentication sockets: #login_dir = /var/run/dovecot/login # chroot login process to the login_dir: #login_chroot = yes # User to use for the login process: login_user = nobody # Maximum process size in megabytes: #login_process_size = 16 # Have each login be processed in its own process: #login_process_per_connection = yes # Number of login processes to create: #login_processes_count = 3 # Maximum number of extra login processes to create: #login_max_processes_count = 128 # Maximum number of connections allowed in login state: #login_max_logging_users = 256 # Greeting message for clients: login_greeting = Dovecot mail access server at CS.HUJI ready. # MAIL PROCESSES: ################# # Maximum number of running mail processes: #max_mail_processes = 1024 # Show more verbose process title (in ps): verbose_proctitle = yes # Valid UID range for users: first_valid_uid = 10 #last_valid_uid = 0 # Valid GID range for users: #first_valid_gid = 1 #last_valid_gid = 0 # Extra groups for mail processes: #mail_extra_groups = # ':' separated list of directories under which chrooting is allowed: #valid_chroot_dirs = # Default chroot directory for mail processes: #mail_chroot = # Default MAIL environment to use when it's not set: default_mail_env = mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u # NAMESPACES: ############# namespace private { separator = / prefix = "" location = maildir:~/imap.maildir/ } namespace private { separator = / prefix = "#imap.mbox/" location = mbox:~/imap.mbox/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u inbox = yes } # MAIL STORE: ############# # Space-separated list of fields to initially save into cache file: #mail_cache_fields = # Space-separated list of fields to never save into cache file: #mail_never_cache_fields = # Like mailbox_check_interval, but used for IDLE command: #mailbox_idle_check_interval = 30 # Whether to allow full filesystem access to clients: #mail_full_filesystem_access = no # Maximum allowed length for mail keyword name: #mail_max_keyword_length = 50 # Whether to save mails with CR+LF instead of plain LF: #mail_save_crlf = no # Whether to use mmap to access mail files: #mail_read_mmaped = no # Whether to disable mmap at all: mmap_disable = yes # Whether to disable write to mmap: #mmap_no_write = no # Locking method for index files: lock_method = dotlock # Whether to list only directories in LIST command: maildir_stat_dirs = yes # Whether to copy mail to other folders using hard links: #maildir_copy_with_hardlinks = no # Locking methods to use for locking mbox: mbox_read_locks = dotlock mbox_write_locks = dotlock # Maximum time in seconds to wait for lock (all of them): mbox_lock_timeout = 300 # Timeout to overwrite dotlock files if mailbox isn't modified: mbox_dotlock_change_timeout = 30 # Whether to read only appended data on change (unless corrupt): #mbox_dirty_syncs = yes # Like mbox_dirty_syncs, but no full syncs with SELECT, EXAMINE, # EXPUNGE, or CHECK: #mbox_very_dirty_syncs = no # Whether to delay writing mbox headers until doing a full write sync: #mbox_lazy_writes = yes # umask to use for mail files and directories: umask = 0077 # Whether drop all privileges before exec of mail process: #mail_drop_priv_before_exec = no # Maximum mail process size in megabytes: #mail_process_size = 256 # Log prefix for mail processes: mail_log_prefix = "%Us(%u): " # IMAP SPECIFIC SETTINGS: ######################### protocol imap { # Login executable location: #login_executable = /usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap-login # IMAP executable location: #mail_executable = /usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap # Maximum IMAP command line length in bytes: #imap_max_line_length = 65536 # Suypport for dynamically loadable modules: #mail_use_modules = no #mail_modules = /usr/local/dovecot/lib/dovecot/imap # Whether to send IMAP capabilities in greeting message: login_greeting_capability = yes # Workarounds for various client bugs: imap_client_workarounds = outlook-idle netscape-eoh } # POP3 SPECIFIC SETTINGS: ######################### protocol pop3 { # Login executable location: #login_executable = /usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login # POP3 executable location: #mail_executable = /usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/pop3 # Whether to not update recent/seen flags in POP3 sessions: #pop3_no_flag_updates = no # Whether to support deprecated LAST command: #pop3_enable_last = no # POP3 UIDL format to use: #pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv # Support for dynamically loadable modules #mail_user_modules = no #mail_modules = /usr/local/dovecot/lib/dovecot/pop3 # Workarounds for various client bugs: pop3_client_workarounds = outlook-no-nuls oe-ns-eoh } # AUTHENTICATION PROCESSES: ########################### # Authentication executable location: #auth_executable = /usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/dovecot-auth # Maximum authentication process size in megabytes: #auth_process_size = 256 # Authentication cache size in kilobytes: #auth_cache_size = 0 # Time to live in seconds for cached data: #auth_cache_ttl = 3600 # Space separated list of realms for SASL authentication mechanisms: #auth_realms = # Default realm/domain to use if none was specified: #auth_default_realm = # List of allowed characters in username: #auth_username_chars = abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789.-_@ # Username character translation before it's looked up in database: #auth_username_translation = # Whether to disable plaintext authentication disable_plaintext_auth = no # More verbose authentication logging: auth_verbose = yes # Even more verbose authentication logging for debugging purposes: auth_debug = yes auth default { # Space separated list of wanted authentication mechanisms mechanisms = plain # Password database specification: passdb pam { } # User database specification: userdb passwd { } # User to use for the authentication process: user = root # Directory where to chroot the process: #chroot = # Number of authentication processes to create: #count = 1 # Whether to require a valid SSL client certificate for # authentication: #ssl_require_client_cert = no }

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[Dovecot] Openwebmail with Dovecot
by ftnx＠ksbase.com 10 Feb '06

10 Feb '06

So far I've managed to get Dovecot to work fine for regular POP users and Squirrelmail. Even though it seems dead slow and obsolete, a few users would like to use Openwebmail. All users are virtual, and there are/will be no system accounts. Anyone have a working example for Dovecot/Openwebmail for virtual user setup? Kari Suomela KARICO Business Services Toronto, ON Canada http://www.karico.ca

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Re: [Dovecot] Mail.app message numbering for deleted messages
by Jesse Chan-Norris 08 Feb '06

08 Feb '06

On Mon, 23 Jan 2006, Jesse Chan-Norris wrote: > On Jan 22, 2006, at 6:44 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote: > > On Mon, 2006-01-16 at 18:29 -0500, jcn-dovecot(a)pith.org > wrote: > I'm having a strange problem that appeared when I > upgraded from� > > .99something to 1.0alpha3 and then disappeared for a while and then� > > re-appeared when I upgraded to 1.0alpha5. > > > I am using mbox and IMAP in Apple's Mail.app to read my mail. When I� > > delete a message in Mail.app, the message gets marked as deleted in the� > > spool and it disappears from the mail listing in Mail. However, the� > > message number does not change until I either manually flush the > > deleted� messages through mail, or I go offline which deletes the > > messages from the� spool. > > > I have mbox_lazy_writes set to 'no' but this didn't seem to have any� > > effect on the behavior. I never saw this type of behavior with UW-IMAP� > > either, which is what I migrated from. > > > What do you mean by "message number doesn't change"? > > To me this sounds like it all works as it should. Deleted messages are > really deleted only until expunge command is given, which is done when > you manually select "purge expunged messages" command or whatever it was > called in Mail. > > Maybe before with UW-IMAP you just had some "automatically expunge > messages" option set? I don't think that UW-IMAP was expunging messages because I could open up the mbox with pine and see all of the messages flagged as "Deleted" but not yet expunged. And when I try a similar test with Fastmail.fm (delete the message in Mail, then check using the web interface) the mail is marked as deleted in the web interface and does not show up in Mail.app but the messages are re-numbered appropriately. Granted, I have no idea how Mail.app does its numbering (especially since Thunderbird doesn't have message numbering), but is it possible that there's more information that the IMAP server should be sending back that Dovecot isn't? I've attached a screenshot from my Mail.app that shows the numbering issue. The gaps in the message sequence are where a deleted (but not expunged) message was. jcn

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[Dovecot] Dovecot index issues (Solaris/Thunderbird)
by Mario Nigrovic-rvvk40 07 Feb '06

07 Feb '06

Folks - My setup is that my mail is filed (by procmail) in ~/.mail/Maildir, an NFS filesystem. But I'm running Dovecot (1.0alpha5) on my local machine (as myself on port 2143), just to serve this mail to my browser (Thunderbird 1.0.2). The NFS data is on a netapp which seems to be creating .nfs files LIKE CRAZY. I expect these are the remnants of lock files, so I'm trying to move my indexes onto local disk. To that end, I've created /var/tmp/mario/dovecot and put the following into my dovecot.conf: default_mail_env = maildir:%h/.mail/Maildir:INDEX=/var/tmp/mario/dovecot Dovecot happily makes index files, but then fails to serve some of my subscribed folders! Thunderbird is less than helpful in telling me what's going wrong, but dtmail shows that dovecot is reporting "out of sync" and a couple other errors (UID out of sequence), then closing the connection (for those folders). This may happen only after Thunderbird has tried to open the folder that I see these errors with dtmail: Dovecot ready. [UNSEEN 227] First unseen. [UIDNEXT 341] Predicted next UID IMAP connection broken (server response) No-op dead stream [CLOSED] No-op dead stream I've turned mmap off and set locking to fcntl. As a last resort, I've turned indexes off default_mail_env = maildir:%h/.mail/Maildir:INDEX=MEMORY but this makes thunderbird reload all headers every time I open a folder, which takes a very long time. Any suggestions? How do I debug this further? Mario

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[Dovecot] dovecot rpms, .subscriptions file, mbox to maildir
by Saurabh Barve 07 Feb '06

07 Feb '06

Hi, I am running dovecot 0.99-14 on a Fedora Core 2 machine. I had a few questions: 1) I wanted to upgrade to the dovecot-1.0 release. However, I am not sure if that's really required. dovecot-0.99-14 has been running very well for me for quite some time. Is there a real advantage to switching to the latest release. The reason I'm asking this is because: i) I don't have too many users to server - around 15 only. ii) My mail server is a pretty fast machine (~1 GHz, 1 GB RAM) machine, so hardware isn't too much of an issue. iii) I like to install software from rpm's. It's not that I can't install from source, but installing from rpm's makes it much easier for me. Just a personal preference. The version of dovecot that I am running was obtained from Dag Wieers web site. I haven't seen a newer version there. I've googled for rpm's for newer versions, and they are available, but I don't want to install it from some third party source that I don't know/trust. iv) I am also planning to support web mail for my users (probably through Squirrelmail). Are there any advantages/disadvantages to upgrading dovecot for that? v) People use Mozilla Mail, Mail.app, Thunderbird, Outlook, and Opera. Does the 1.0 version provide better integration with different mail clients (even though I understand that sometimes it's a problem with the client implementation). So, are there newer version of dovecot (1.0-stable) available in rpm formats which are guaranteed to be safe and un-trojaned? And is there any really good reason why I should upgrade to 1.0-stable? 2) My second question is about creating the .subscriptions (or subscriptions in 1.0) file. When I moved people over from using pine to using a mail client like Evolution/Thunderbird, I had to create .subscriptions/.mailboxlist file for them so that they could see the folders that they had created in pine. However, people still sometimes access e-mail using pine. They then create new folders in pine, which they are unable to see in their mail client. Is there a way around it? This occurs especially when people check their mail at the start of the month, and pine asks about saving/deleting old sent-mail folders, Trash folders. Is there a way to add these folders automagically to the .subscriptions file? 3) Would I be able to support web mail using mailboxes in mbox format, as I have them now? Or do I have to go for Maildir format? Since our university introduced web mail, they have had two sets of folders - one with capitalization (Sent, Deleted Messages, etc.) and one without (sent-mail, etc. - these were from our pine days). Is this due to web mail? Also, if I do need to convert from mbox to Maildir, what is the standard tool for doing that? I saw at least three different tools/scripts for doing that (mbox2maildir,mb2d,mb2md-2,mb2md.pl, .. ). Which tool (and from where) should I use to convert mailboxes without problems? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Saurabh. ----- sa(a)atmos.colostate.edu

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[Dovecot] Shared maildirs
by Charles Marcus 06 Feb '06

06 Feb '06

Hi, This is the one thing holding me back from switching to Dovecot... Can anyone give a realistic timeframe for when Shred maildirs will be officially supported? Thanks... other than that missing piece, Dovecot rocks! Charles

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[Dovecot] nearly there
by ohp＠pyrenet.fr 05 Feb '06

05 Feb '06

Hi Timo et all. At last I found with unix socket wouldn't connect and it works now. However after auth, imap crashes with signal 6. This happens on 1 machine, the other (unixware too) work fine. The stack trace doesn't make much sense here it is anway... Core image of imap (process p1) created CORE FILE [makedev in cmd-status.c(a)sys/mkdev.h] SIGNALED 8 (fpe code[FPE_INTDIV] address[0x804e38b]) in p1 76: return __makedev(ver, maj, min); debug> Stack Trace for p1, Program imap *[0] makedev(maj=16, min=1, presumed: 0x8094258) [cmd-status.c@sys/mkdev.h@76] [1] cmd_store(cmd=0x0, presumed: 0x1, 0x80947a0) [cmd-store.c@139] [2] _cmd_select_full(cmd=0x8072498, readonly=false) [cmd-select.c@84] [3] cmd_store(cmd=0x10, presumed: 0x807d184, 0x8047cac) [cmd-store.c@74] [4] minor(dev=134511756, presumed: 0x8055266, 0x8047cac) [cmd-subscribe.c@sys/mkdev.h@112] [5] imap_search_args_build(pool=0x8047cac, box=0x8047cb4, args=0x8047ca0, error_r=0x804ebc1) [imap-search.c@416] [6] imap_search_get_uidset_arg(pool=0x1, box=0x8047cac, uidset="\215}\004\b\235}\004\b\245}\004\b\020\220\b\b\313}\004\b\335}\004\b\357}\004\b", arg_r=0x0, error_r=0x0, 0x1) [imap-search.c@447] [7] cmd_append_cancel(ctx=0x8047cb4, nonsync=true, presumed: 0) [cmd-append.c@158] [8] ?() [0] debug> The log says Trying to allocate 0 bytes and imap gets killed. Does it ring any bells? -- Olivier PRENANT Tel: +33-5-61-50-97-00 (Work) 15, Chemin des Monges +33-5-61-50-97-01 (Fax) 31190 AUTERIVE +33-6-07-63-80-64 (GSM) FRANCE Email: ohp(a)pyrenet.fr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Make your life a dream, make your dream a reality. (St Exupery)

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