November 2006 - dovecot

[Dovecot] lmtp: help needed
by Leonardo Lanzi 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Hi all, parsing the mailing list archive, it seems that the lmtp-server will not be developed soon, so I'm looking for someone that could help me in writing one, even if not the best one. That's why: I've just started to study dovecot, as I was recruited, just about forced, to help The System Manager of our University in the global e-mail migration - more than 37'000 users, 440 mailing lists, everything synchronized with administrative databases and so on - from open-vms (yes... you have not sight problems: OpenVMS ... please don't blame us). In particular, we have (we'd like so much) to directly deliver from a front-end load-balanced anti-spam&virus all "good" messages into maildirs, updating at the same time the indexes for dovecot. Our idea is to write an lmtp, possibly not from scratch; we have already a threaded server, recently born as a raw smtp server to test the antivirus and antispam system under heavy load (before to start the migration), that can be converted to lmtp protocol, but we lack of information on the dovecot API for delivering in a "dovecot-way". As often occurs, we have not months to get it done, therefore _any_ kind of suggestion will be very much appreciated. Thank you all for the help, and patience! -- Leonardo Lanzi Department of Physics - University of Florence - Italy -- PS - Examples of help: 1. "The code is self-explaining, but obviously you're too old to learn: accept to be in the mist, and switch to cyrus" 2. "the following n-functions ... of deliver can accept your data from memory and do all the job" 3. "I've already done everything, download it at the following url..." 3a. "I've already done everything, but you must send me, _before_, your smtp stressing server, or all your tests on latency of irq handlers with 2.6 kernel, or at least one 18-year-old scottish-malt-whisky bottle!"

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[Dovecot] Subfolders with Thunderbird and maildir?
by Andrew Z 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

I setup a test dovecot-1.0-0.beta8.2.fc5 and left most of the settings as the defaults. In Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 Windows, when I tried to create a subfolder named "subfolder" under INBOX, it showed up as the same level a INBOX and with the name "INBOX^subfolder". I was able to manually create a subfolder using "mkdir ~/mail/test_manual_subfolder; touch ~/mail_test_subfolder/blah" and then subscribing to it. That's too much work. :) Now when I try to create a subfolder of a non-inbox folder, nothing happens (not even an error). Screen shot: http://img452.imageshack.us/my.php?image=subfoldersthunderbird15ao6.png The Dovecot system is Fedora Core 5 x86 and an NFS client for /home. I'm considering switching from Trustix, UW-IMAP, and mbox. I'm also considering changing INBOX to a Maildir (not /var/spool/mail/%u). Andrew

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[Dovecot] MAILDIR environment
by adcx＠server101.com 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

from docs/mail-storages.txt: "Also as a special case, if MAILDIR environment exists, maildir storage is used with the directory specified in it." Forgive me if this seems obvious, but is this talking about setting MAILDIR as an enivornment variable? I have it set on my system in both /etc/profile and ~/.bash_profile: MAILDIR=/path/to/maildir/ export MAILDIR and have confirmed this worked by running 'echo $MAILDIR'. I've logged the user in question out and then in again, as well as restarting dovecot but it still defaults to checking ~/Maildir when the user logs in. Setting the location using default_mail_env is not an option here as I need the fallback behaviour that occurs when default_mail_env is not set. Any advice appreciated.

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[Dovecot] Redundant shared mail store?
by Jasper Bryant-Greene 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Hi guys I'm about to embark on a project replacing a legacy single mail server running proprietary software with a cluster of Dovecot servers. We clearly need a shared mail store for these servers, but we are not happy with simply using a server running NFS as this becomes a single point of failure. What have other people used? AFAICT our options are: * A shared block device (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, ATAoE etc) running GFS or similar to allow multiple servers to access it concurrently * Two or more NFS units, either with built-in support for replication of FS changes and failover, or with scripts for achieving this functionality I prefer option 1, although it's expensive. What have other people used? Do we have other options? TIA -- Jasper Bryant-Greene Director Album Limited jasper(a)albumltd.co.nz +64 21 708 334 / 0800 425 286 http://www.albumltd.co.nz/

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[Dovecot] Quota problems on uidlist files
by James Nunnerley 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Hi All, Please excuse me for this somewhat a slightly uneducated explanation of a problem we are experiencing. I'm more a web developer rather than a sysadmin, and have only recently been looking at how exactly dovecot works. We're having a problem when users/groups quotas are reached on our server platform. Our platform bases quotas on groups - i.e. domains, so a single user has a user username and group of their domain; and the domain has a set amount of space available. This means that if they then try and access their email, via either imap or in most cases webmail, it would seem that dovecot is unable to create the dovecot-uidlist file - which makes complete sense, because it's running as that user and under the group as detailed above.. We've tried changing a pre-existing file to have group ownership of nobody, but from what we can gather, this file is not actually updated, but deleted and recreated when changes occur. One solution would be to take the dovecot-uidlist file out of the mail directory structure, on which the quotas are enforced, but this is not configurable in dovecot. Alternatively, having someway of changing to ownership of the file would also get around this problem. Does anyone have any experience of either a work around for this, or something which we can change in dovecot that will allow users to create a dovecot file, even if they are over quotas? Many thanks James James Nunnerley Applications Developer Namesco Limited

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[Dovecot] [Fwd: Re: Authentication]
by "M. Tolga Özses" 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Sorry, I forgot to Reply all -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Authentication Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:49:42 +0200 From: "M. Tolga Özses" <mtozses(a)sabanciuniv.edu> To: eric <eric(a)ccat.co.nz> References: <456D3221.2030900(a)ccat.co.nz> eric wrote: > Try as I may, I cannot get Dovecot to allow anything but blank > passwords listed in a custom file I made for the purpose. It will not > recognise anybody in passwd. > Only using POP3 on an internal network so little danger of incursions. > Once I created a password file with user names and no password, one > user could login (from Outlook 2003) but another could not. > Telnet test also fails to authenticate. > > I have allowed the group to write to the /var/spool/folder > Syslog simply showed authentication failed. > Relevant bits of my config: > disable plain text = no It is disable_plaintext_auth = no for me, and it works well > mail extra group = users It should be mail_extra_groups = mail, same > pop3 uidl format %08Xu%08Xv pasted direct from the help > I have un commented auth user name characteres > mechanisms = plain > and I have set auth debug passwords = yes > user = root > > System: Suse 9.3 > Dovecot 1.0 rc13 > > Any ideas? > > -- M. Tolga Özses Bilgi Teknolojisi Sabanci Üniversitesi Orhanli 34956 Tuzla Istanbul Tel: (216) 483 91 98 Web: http://people.sabanciuniv.edu/mtozses -- M. Tolga Özses Bilgi Teknolojisi Sabanci Üniversitesi Orhanli 34956 Tuzla Istanbul Tel: (216) 483 91 98 Web: http://people.sabanciuniv.edu/mtozses

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[Dovecot] Keep getting this
by Brent Clark 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Hey all I just installed logcheck and with the result im seeing quiet a few of these. Nov 28 16:59:11 mail dovecot: IMAP(user): file ioloop.c: line 22 (io_add): assertion failed: (fd >= 0) My question is, is it something I need to be concerned about, and also is there something I can do to help dovecot. Kind Regards Brent Clark

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[Dovecot] Extra_fields / first check userdb?
by Leroy van Logchem 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Hi, I would like to supply a few users with extra_fields. All users are found by PAM first so the userdb passwd-file doesnt seem to be used. How to alter the lookup sequence? We can't remove the accounts from the central passwd, just for Dovecot. Thanks, Leroy

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[Dovecot] Authentication
by eric 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

Try as I may, I cannot get Dovecot to allow anything but blank passwords listed in a custom file I made for the purpose. It will not recognise anybody in passwd. Only using POP3 on an internal network so little danger of incursions. Once I created a password file with user names and no password, one user could login (from Outlook 2003) but another could not. Telnet test also fails to authenticate. I have allowed the group to write to the /var/spool/folder Syslog simply showed authentication failed. Relevant bits of my config: disable plain text = no mail extra group = users pop3 uidl format %08Xu%08Xv pasted direct from the help I have un commented auth user name characteres mechanisms = plain and I have set auth debug passwords = yes user = root System: Suse 9.3 Dovecot 1.0 rc13 Any ideas? -- John McC

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Re: [Dovecot] considering dovecot
by Rick Hazey 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

On Nov 28, 2006, at 3:43 PM, Ejay Hire wrote: > Hello. What email client do you use? Most of the one's I've used (on > Windows) choke at 5k. Our users tend to use one of the following: Apple Mail Entourage (basically Outlook for Mac) Outlook Outlook Express Thunderbird and then there's the webmail system we provide. Apple Mail has virtually no limit on messages it will handle. I currently have over 500,000 emails in my Apple Mail. It stores email much like Dovecot; each email is in a separate file. This makes backups a breeze, which a reason to switch to a server that uses maildir. Entourage, Outlook Express and Outlook have problems if the data file exceeds 2GB. This is an ongoing problem and I'm hoping by keeping email on the server, the support headaches will be reduced. I'm not sure what limits Thunderbird has. I use Thunderbird to connect to the main directory for all email and it doesn't seem to have any trouble handling it. Currently, everyone is using POP3 but I want to move to IMAP. (Thunderbird is the only client that connects via IMAP on our systems) The motivation for moving to IMAP is primarily for spam handling. Instead of users contacting us for emails that might be caught as spam, the spam will be moved to a "junk mail" folder. Then the user can peruse the folder themselves to find any legit email improperly categorized as junk. Vacation messages is the other item that is prompting a change. Everyone is screaming for that feature.

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