November 2006 - dovecot

[Dovecot] Dovecot-auth stand alone
by Jorgen Lundman 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

Since you have to have a SASL implementation with Postfix, either Cyrus or Dovecot, would it be feasable to have autoconf options to build only those parts required? Currently I attempt to disable most things, except for LDAP which we want to use: ./configure --with-ldap --without-pop3d --without-passwd --without-passwd-file --without-shadow --without-pam --without-checkpassword --without-bsdauth --without-vpopmail --without-ssl --without-deliver --without-sql-drivers --with-storages= That still compiles, and installs, imap. No way to stop that. However, master process "dovecot" does not want to start with "protocols=" set to empty. This is somewhat understandable, but I really do not want any listening ports, just the Unix auth socket and dovecot-auth process. Bind localhost for now? I take it I should run dovecot-auth as stand-alone, setting the AUTH_1 environment variable as well as a few others. Lund -- Jorgen Lundman | <lundman(a)lundman.net> Unix Administrator | +81 (0)3 -5456-2687 ext 1017 (work) Shibuya-ku, Tokyo | +81 (0)90-5578-8500 (cell) Japan | +81 (0)3 -3375-1767 (home)

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[Dovecot] 1.0.rc10 status report
by David Lee 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

(Background: Relatively new to dovecot; looking to do transparent replacement of long-established UW-IMAP on cluster of Linux boxes which NFS-mount a shared "/var/spool/mail".) With rc8, where I had already increased "login_max_processes_count" from default 128 to 1024, we had still hit the issue of too many logins crashing dovecot, so that trial had only lasted a couple of hours. With rc10, I doubled this to try to avoid the problem (I didn't want to risk testing the new code that addressed the problem... sorry!). We ran for almost a full working day. Good! Because of a few issues (below) I then backed off. 1. "User unknown": We use NIS for our passwd information. On the earlier rc8 test we had had several occurences of "User unknown" (from "deliver") giving "dsn=5..." for perfectly valid users. So for this rc10 test I applied a local patch so these were reduced to "EX_TEMPFAIL" (dsn=4...). (This was triggered, as epected, a few times and subsequent delivery attemtps succeeded.) I strongly suspect that this is some sort of issue with FC5, probably "nscd" and nothing to do with dovecot. Hints would be nice, but from the dovecot perspective you may probably ignore this item. 2. For one particular user, the "deliver" consistently gave: Failed to create storage for '...' with mail 'mbox:/HOME_DIRECTORY_USED_BUT_NOT_GIVEN_BY_USERDB:INBOX=... I think this is ultimately due to something strange in the user ".forward" file. I'd be delighted to follow this up with anyone else who might have seen it. Although in one sense we may be drifting off-topic, in another sense I suspect that there is scope for adjusting "deliver" to handle this more gracefully. 3. There were several occurences of: IMAP(...): file ../../../../../src/lib-storage/index/mbox/mbox-sync-rewrite.c: line 405 (mbox_sync_read_and_move): assertion failed: (need_space == (uoff_t)-mails[idx].space) child 30842 (imap) killed with signal 6 This looks particularly awkward. Any thoughts? 4. There were two occurences of: IMAP(...): file ../../../src/lib-index/mail-index.c: line 1801 (mail_index_move_to_memory): assertion failed: (index->fd == -1) child 20493 (imap) killed with signal 6 Again, this looks particularly awkward. Any thoughts? For these last two items, note that the indexes are currently NFS-shared alongside the INBOX area. I'm still not clear on how to regard the concept of indexes, as applied to a small cluster of machines, and handling simultaneous updates to INBOXes (analogous to the vital importance of INBOX locking for such updates). If one imagines the IMAP daemon (and pop and deliver) as file-clients of the (NFS-shared) INBOXes on a fileserver, do the indexes belong very close to the INBOXes (fileserver) or the dovecot software (file client)? So should I have the indexes on the fileserver (one instance), or should they be on each cluster machine's private storage (possibly several instances; one per cluster machine)? I've got them on the server; would they be better on the cluster clients? (Might that be the cause and fix of these two problems?) -- : David Lee I.T. Service : : Senior Systems Programmer Computer Centre : : Durham University : : http://www.dur.ac.uk/t.d.lee/ South Road : : Durham DH1 3LE : : Phone: +44 191 334 2752 U.K. :

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[Dovecot] deliver + quota failure
by Mark Ruijs 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

I use Dovecot's deliver as the LDA for Postfix in a virtual user setting. My maillog reads: Oct 22 00:17:51 mail dovecot: auth(default): master in: USER 1 mark.ruys(a)in2sports.net service=deliver Oct 22 00:17:51 mail dovecot: auth-worker(default): sql(mark.ruys(a)in2sports.net): SELECT maildir AS home, 5000 AS uid, 5000 AS gid, CONCAT('dirsize:storage=', round(quota/1000)) AS quota FROM mailbox WHERE username = 'mark.ruys(a)in2sports.net' AND active = 1 Oct 22 00:17:51 mail dovecot: auth(default): master out: USER 1 mark.ruys(a)in2sports.net home=in2sports.net/mark.ruys/ uid=5000 gid=5000 quota=dirsize:storage=10240 Oct 22 00:17:51 mail deliver(mark.ruys(a)in2sports.net): msgid=<00c801c6f55e$af416fb0$8801a8c0@Moskou>: save failed to INBOX Oct 22 00:17:51 mail deliver(mark.ruys(a)in2sports.net): open(in2sports.net/mark.ruys//.temp.mail.in2sports.net.12777.5c70c02bb158bd1 a) failed: No such file or directory The reason is, I'm out of quota. I expected some kind of bounce, but the message is killed by Amavis because of a bad header: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Your message was automatically rejected by Dovecot Mail Delivery Agent. The following reason was given: Quota exceeded --12684/mail.in2sports.net Content-Type: message/disposition-notification Reporting-UA: mail.in2sports.net; Dovecot Mail Delivery Agent Final-Recipient: rfc822; mark.ruys(a)in2sports.net The problem is, there is no recipient (header is missing). Anyone a clue how to fix it? Thanks for some directions. Mark Ruys Config: - Dovecot rc 10 - postfix-2.3.3-2.mysql.sasl2.vda.fc4 dovecot.conf: protocol imap { mail_plugins = quota imap_quota } protocol lda { postmaster_address = postmaster(a)in2sports.net mail_plugins = quota auth_socket_path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master } postfix/main.cf: dovecot_destination_recipient_limit = 1 virtual_transport = dovecot virtual_create_maildirsize = yes virtual_mailbox_limit_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql/limits.cfg virtual_mailbox_limit_override = yes virtual_overquota_bounce = yes

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[Dovecot] valid_chroot_dirs question
by Luca Corti 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

Hello, I've got a dovecot setup using PAM and real system users. In this setup I also use pure-ftpd to give local users ftp access to their $HOMEs. To have pure-ftpd chroot into the user home i replaced /home/user with /home/user/./ in /etc/passwd. Unfortunately this breaks Dovecot this way: Oct 23 18:18:20 localhost dovecot: Invalid chroot directory '/home/foo' (user foo) (see valid_chroot_dirs in config file) and dovecot.conf says # ':' separated list of directories under which chrooting is allowed for mail # processes (ie. /var/mail will allow chrooting to /var/mail/foo/bar too). # This setting doesn't affect login_chroot or auth_chroot variables. # WARNING: Never add directories here which local users can modify, that # may lead to root exploit. Usually this should be done only if you don't # allow shell access for users. See doc/configuration.txt for more information. #valid_chroot_dirs = Now if I set valid_chroot_dirs = /home everything works, but the WARNING pretty much scares me since user foo HAS shell access. Is this safe? Is there a way to avoid this? Why I can't chroot to /home/foo/./ if I can to /home/foo ? I'm on 1.0rc10 thanks

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[Dovecot] Dovecot imap bug
by Lauri Jesmin 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

Hello, i got such error from dovecot RC10, Oct 24 10:38:58 raud dovecot: [ID 107833 mail.info] imap-login: Login: user=<eleppik>, method=PLAIN, rip=xxx, lip=yyy Oct 24 10:39:03 raud dovecot: [ID 107833 mail.error] IMAP(eleppik): file mbox-sync-rewrite.c: line 405 (mbox_sync_read_and_move): assertion failed: (need_space == (uoff_t)-mails[idx].space) This is Solaris on x86, 32 bit executable, compiled with gcc, and there is enough room for index creation. -- Lauri Jesmin <lauri.jesmin(a)ut.ee> Tartu Ülikool

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[Dovecot] Installation of Dovecot
by Steven F Siirila 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

When I configure Dovecot to conform to our directory hierarchy, it insists on adding 'dovecot/' to the prefixes I specify. Is there any way to inhibit this? My configure command is: ./configure --prefix=/opt/dovecot --sysconfdir=/etc/opt/dovecot \ --libexecdir=/opt/dovecot/libexec --localstatedir=/var/opt/dovecot \ --without-sql-drivers --with-ssl=openssl \ --with-ssldir=/etc/opt/dovecot My problem is with the resulting directories: /opt/dovecot/libexec/dovecot is used instead of /opt/dovecot/libexec /var/opt/dovecot/lib/dovecot is used instead of /var/opt/dovecot/lib /var/opt/dovecot/run/dovecot is used instead of /var/opt/dovecot/run It seems that Dovecot assumes that libexecdir and localstatedir refer to non-Dovecot-specific directories, and adds 'dovecot/' to the path. Is there any way to avoid this? In our environment )we use: /opt/XXX Optional software XXX /etc/opt/XXX Configuration for optional software XXX /var/opt/XXX Variable data for optional software XXX (Which makes for easier upgrades) -- Steven F. Siirila Office: Lind Hall, Room 130B Internet Services E-mail: sfs(a)umn.edu Office of Information Technology Voice: (612) 626-0244 University of Minnesota Fax: (612) 626-7593

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[Dovecot] Maildir++?
by Marten Lehmann 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

Hello just to have up2date records: Is the current dovecot release capable of the maildirsizefile as described in http://www.exim.org/exim-html-4.63/doc/html/spec_html/ch26.html#id2643923 ? Regards Marten

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[Dovecot] Fw: POP 23 problem
by Manoj Fernandez 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

Hi there I am using Dovecot on Ubuntu 6 LTS forPOP3 services. The user account created at installation works fine and Iam able to log to POP3 services by telnetr. When I created a another user and tried tologin via telnet this is what happens telnet XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 10 + OK Dovecot ready user XXXX + OK pass XXX +OK logged in Connection tohost lost and session terminates. Pls advise what could be the problem Tks Manoj Sri Lanka

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[Dovecot] imap process crashing with "file mail-cache-fields.c: line 26: unreached"
by JB Zimmerman 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

Hoping someone's seen this and/or can help...heh. I'm running the at rpm of dovecot, version dovecot-1.0-0_27.rc10.el4.at. I'm running it on RHEL4, up to date. We're using Maildir (we're upgraded from a Courier-IMAP installation) and things are working...but...we have a few users with very large mailboxes (not their inboxes) where they archive stuff (200k+ messages). When they try to read those mailboxes, the imap server instantly drops the connection, and I get the following in the log: --cut-- Oct 27 11:20:11 hostname dovecot: IMAP(user): file mail-cache-fields.c: line 26: unreached Oct 27 11:20:11 hostname dovecot: child 27514 (imap) killed with signal 6 --cut-- host and user names changed to protect the guilty. I have tried increasing the imap process size max to 512, as well as doubling the IMAP command size to 131072 (bytes)? Neither made a difference. *other* mailboxes on the same account work fine. The error happens *immediately*, not after a timeout, as soon as they select the mailbox in their client (we're using Evolution, and have tried pine as well...I'm working on trying other clients). The Maildir caching optimization settings in the conf are left to default. Any ideas? Many thanks. J.B. Zimmerman --

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Re: [Dovecot] Clustering (replication and proxying) plans for the future
by Bill Boebel 02 Nov '06

02 Nov '06

On Tue, October 24, 2006 2:31 pm, Timo Sirainen <tss(a)iki.fi> said: > The replication could work simply by sending the transaction logs' > contents to the replicatio process which passes it onto other servers, > which finally sync their local mailboxes based on that data. Since > Dovecot already is able to sync mailboxes based on the transaction log's > contents this should be pretty easy to implement. > > Of course the new mails' contents also have to be sent. This could be > prioritized lower than the transaction traffic, so that each server > always has very up-to-date view of the mailbox metadata, but not > necessarily the contents of all the mails. > > If the server finds itself in a situation that it doesn't have some > specific mail, it'll send a request to the replication process to fetch > it ASAP from another server. The reply will then take the highest > priority in the queue. Is your primary goal with this replication to add redundancy or to distribute load such as for shared mailboxes? I've thought about the redundancy side of this a lot, but not so much about load distribution. It sounds like you're going for load distribution, but... If the goal is redundancy, I'd suggest that mailbox state is less important than the mail data. Index files can be recreated from the data, and would not even be needed on the secondary server(s) unless the primary fails. So I'd put a higher priority on getting the mail content to the secondary servers. If the goal is to distribute load for shared mailboxes, then your prioritization makes sense. Also, if the goal is redundancy, this design can be simplified a lot by having one master and one or more slaves. All modify operations would go to the master, so that you do not need global locks. Different sets of users would belong to different namespaces, so that you can have multiple replication paths in your cluster. You'd also want an API for the replication process so that third-party applications that modify mailboxes can log those changes so that they are replicated. And in that case, the replication process could be made generic enough so that it can be used to replicate any set of files, with or without Dovecot. Bill

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