May 2007 - dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] Virtual mailbox plans
by Timo Sirainen 18 May '07

18 May '07

Configuration ------------- There could be global and user-specific configuration files, similar to how ACLs work. I think the global virtual mailboxes should be only defaults though, so that users could delete them and create a new mailbox (virtual or non-virtual) with the same name. The global virtual mailboxes could be described in a single file, such as: Trash deleted Work/My Unseen (mailboxes "box1" "box2" "box2/*") or to "tss(a)iki.fi" to "timo.sirainen(a)iki.fi" unseen So the format would be <virtual mailbox name> LF <search condition, allowed to wrap to new line> LF LF <next virtual mailbox, etc.> Per-user virtual mailboxes could also be listed in a similar file. If the search condition is empty, a globally defined virtual mailbox has been deleted. Another way would be to have per-mailbox dovecot-virtual files, but I'm not sure how global virtual mailboxes could then be easily deleted. Also having all of them in a single file makes listing the mailboxes pretty fast. The search condition would be a standard IMAP SEARCH reply, with the exception of the mailboxes parameter to specify what mailboxes are used. Virtual mailboxes would be implemented as a new mail storage backend, so their namespace configuration would be like: namespace private { prefix = "virtual/" location = virtual:~/virtual:GLOBAL=/etc/dovecot/virtual-globals.conf } Syncing ------- ~/virtual directory would contain index files for the virtual mailboxes. If the index files don't exist, a full resync for the virtual mailbox is done. This means opening all the real mailboxes configured for the vbox, running the SEARCH command and adding the returned UIDs to the vbox's indexes. The index would contain at least mailbox ID and message UID numbers. Probably would be a good idea to also save UIDVALIDITY numbers just to be safe, although that's a bit of a waste of space and it could be handled in other ways too, such as changing the mailbox ID whenever its UIDVALIDITY changes.. Mailbox IDs would be mapped to names in mailbox list index. This index already exists, although there still seems to be some bugs in it. At least creating a new list index has a race condition. I should look into making the list index a bit more realiable. Also the list indexes work only with Maildir++ layout currently. After the vbox has initially been synced, it needs to also handle updates. I think optionally the updates could be done the same way as full sync (opening all mailboxes to see if there are changes), but a faster way would be to update the virtual mailboxes immediately when the real mailboxes are being modified. So IMAP, POP3 and deliver all need to be aware of the virtual mailboxes and what real mailboxes are mapped to what virtual ones. Whenever doing a change that causes the message to either be added to or removed from a virtual mailbox according to their rules, the virtual mailbox's index is updated immediately. Being able to determine this change quickly might be the biggest change required to Dovecot's base code. Changes ------- Virtual mailboxes would share their state with the real mailbox, so any flag changes done in the vbox would be immediately changed in the real mailbox as well. The same goes for expunges. Virtual mailboxes' transaction logs would use different records for expunges and removals. Expunges would be handled normally, but removals wouldn't be removed from the in-memory view of the mailbox until EXPUNGE command was given (although they would be removed from dovecot.index immediately, so new sessions wouldn't see them). This makes it possible to have a vbox with only unseen messages, but without the message getting expunged immediately after a client opens the mail. So the EXPUNGE command could act as a "session synchronization" command. And of course it would also expunge the messages that had been marked as \Deleted.

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[Dovecot] deliver exit codes?
by Ralf Hildebrandt 18 May '07

18 May '07

Before switching to dovecot deliver for all local deliveries, I'm calling deliver from maildrop (yes, don't laugh). Snippet from my global /etc/maildroprc: # Store maillist & junk messages directly /^Precedence: ?list/ if ( $MATCH ) { exception { log "Bulk message: $MATCH" #to "$DEFAULT" to "|$DELIVER" } } I replaced to "$DEFAULT" (meaning: delivery to $HOME/Maildir) with to "|$DELIVER" (meaning: pipe the mail into dovecot deliver, and deliver to INBOX = $HOME/Maildir) This works really well, UNLESS a user exceeds his/her quota: In that particular case, deliver fails to deliver the mail and generates a bounce, all on it's own. It's exit status is 0 in that case, so my MTA (postfix) thinks that the mail has been delivered successfully. I'd prefer deliver to return EX_TEMPFAIL, which I can pass through maildrop back to postfix, which will then log a temporary error and will bounce the mail all by itself after 5 days time. But how? -- Ralf Hildebrandt (Ralf.Hildebrandt(a)charite.de) plonk(a)charite.de Postfix - Einrichtung, Betrieb und Wartung Tel. +49 (0)30-450 570-155 http://www.arschkrebs.de The Imperial Vendor or Contractor probably told them that droid armies don't need redundant command centers, nor any kind of high availability ... you're supposed to buy several, and cluster them. Redundant Array of Inexpensive Droids?

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[Dovecot] Disable plaintext authentications
by Alexander Moisseev 18 May '07

18 May '07

Dear Sirs, I have Postfix 2.5 with Dovecot 1.0.0 as authentication server. Can I disable SMTP plaintext authentications for WAN clients, but allow it for LAN ones?

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[Dovecot] UID larger than next_uid in file /hosts/domain/user/dovecot-uidlist
by Chris Jeans 18 May '07

18 May '07

I'm having the following problem and would appreciate any help or tips on how to fix it. None of my users can send email via pop3 or imap clients the only consistent thing that i keep seeing in the logs are the following 2 messages: UID larger than next_uid in file /hosts/domain/user/dovecot-uidlist sync: UID inserted in the middle of mailbox After searching the web all I can find is this link http://dovecot.org/list/dovecot-cvs/2007-May/008819.html which deals with Index: maildir-uidlist.c I'm running dovecot 1.0.0 on FreeBSD 6.2. -- Chris Jeans cmjeans(a)gmail.com

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Re: [Dovecot] Replication plans
by Bill Boebel 18 May '07

18 May '07

On Fri, May 18, 2007 1:10 pm, Timo Sirainen <tss(a)iki.fi> said: > On Fri, 2007-05-18 at 12:20 -0400, Bill Boebel wrote: >> So what about tackling this replication problem from a different >> angle... Make it Dovecot's job to replicate the index and control >> files between servers, and make it the file system's job to replicate >> just the mail data. This would require further disconnecting the >> index and control files from the mail data, so that there is less >> syncing required. i.e. remove the need to check directory mtimes and >> to compare directory listings against the index; and instead assume >> that the indexes are always correct. Periodically you could still >> check to see if a sync is needed, but you'd do this must less >> frequently. > > This would practically mean that you want either cydir or dbox storage. > > This kind of a hybrid replication / clustered filesystem implementation > would simplify the replication a bit, but all the difficult things > related to UID conflicts etc. will still be there. So I wouldn't mind > implementing this, but I think implementing the message content sending > via TCP socket wouldn't add much more code anymore. > > The clustered filesystem could probably be used to simplify some things > though, such as UID allocation could be done by renaming a "uid-<next > uid>" file. If the rename() succeeded, you allocated the UID, otherwise > someone else did and you'll have to find the new filename and try again. > But I'm not sure if this kind of a special-case handling would be good. > Unless of course I decide to use the same thing for non-replicated > cydir/dbox. Dbox definitely sounds promising. I'd avoid putting this uid-<nextuid> file in the same location as the mail storage though, because if you can truly keep mail storage isolated and infrequently accessed, then you can do cool things like store your mail data remotely on Amazon S3 or equivalent.

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Re: [Dovecot] LDAP for Virtual Domains
by Bryan Vyhmeister 18 May '07

18 May '07

On May 16, 2007, at 10:29 PM, razor wrote: > 17.05.07 в 05:06 Bryan Vyhmeister в своём письме > писал(а): > >> Is anyone using LDAP along with Dovecot where mail is being >> accessed in the form of /var/vmail/${domain}/${user}? I have not >> figured out how to extract the domain from LDAP in order to make >> this work. I know this is sparse information but maybe there is an >> easy fix. If not, I can post more information. >> >> Bryan > > i am using exim+dovecot+lda+openldap Thank you for the info. Bryan

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[Dovecot] Wiki relating to subscriptions
by Bruce Bodger 17 May '07

17 May '07

On this wiki page http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration/UW appears this information: "It's possible to keep using the .mailboxlist}} filename (as long as it's in the same directory) by modifying {{{SUBSCRIPTION_FILE_NAME define in src/lib-storage/index/mbox/mbox-storage.h" However, if a user wanted to continue using .mailboxlist wouldn't they also have to change the same define in src/lib-storage/index/ maildir/maildir-storage.h? Also, (regarding v1.0.0 code) the default define in mbox-storage.h is ".subscriptions" whereas the default define in maildir-storage.h is "subscriptions" (no dot) B. Bodger New York, NY

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[Dovecot] Maildir format migration
by Tony Tsang 17 May '07

17 May '07

Hi all, I am planning to use dovecot IMAP on my server. Currently it is running UW-IMAP server with Maildir format storing users' mail. I've found that dovecot uses different Maildir format from UW-IMAP. Is there any configuration option for adapting dovecot to use format used by UW-IMAP? Thanks a lot. Tony.

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[Dovecot] Processing too fast?
by Daniel L. Miller 17 May '07

17 May '07

I'm trying to use Dovecot to make administering ASSP a bit easier. I've created a mailbox with a number of subfolders (Spam, Ham, etc.) and have ASSP setup to save mail in the appropriate folder e.g. /var/mail/ASSP/.INBOX.Ham/new. But I'm having problems with ASSP complaining about the newly created files - I believe the file gets opened, then it disappears before ASSP finishes writing to it. Is Dovecot grabbing the file from "new" and moving it to "cur" faster than ASSP can write? How can I get around this? ASSP only allows for a folder to save each category to - I can't specify an LDA. -- Daniel

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[Dovecot] CONVERT Plugin
by Bruce Bodger 17 May '07

17 May '07

Timo, Running v1.0.0 The convert plugin works pretty damn good! No need to mess with external utilities. One comment, though: Running here on OS X, I configured it with this convert_mail line: convert_mail = mbox:~/Library/Mail/IMAP/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u and mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir The IMAP directory was renamed to IMAP-converted after the process but the inbox (in /var/mail) does not get renamed. The WIKI sounds like it should be renamed to something, too. B. Bodger New York, NY

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