July 2008 - dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] Using tags instead of folders?
by Patrick Nagel 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

Hi, currently most people store their messages in some sort of folder hierarchy, so that they can find them later easily. Here, for example, mails that are connected to a project are being stored in /CompanyName/ProjectNumber folders. Now I was wondering if there is any reason against using tags instead of a folder hierarchy, because tags are better when it comes to mails that belong to multiple projects (maybe even belonging to multiple companies) at once. All mails could then be stored in one folder/mailbox, fulltext search indexing would work well. You could search for a tag that consists of the ProjectNumber and would get all mails that belong to that project, just as if you would have opened that folder in the old hierarchy. You could save this search as a 'Search Folder' (talking in Thunderbird terms). Then I looked at how Thunderbird implements those tags when using IMAP. It stores them as IMAP keywords. Dovecot stores the first 26 flags in the filename, because it will only use one letter. Mapping between client's tag name and the letter is being done in dovecot-keywords files (one for each mailbox). If there are more IMAP keywords than 26, they will be stored in the dovecot.index file. (http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir) Now imagine we want to have 1000s (maybe 10000s) of different tags (=IMAP keywords) - instead of folders. Can this be recommended? What happens if the index file gets corrupted for some reason? (I had to delete dovecot.index files before...). What happens if the Thunderbird profile breaks? What happens if we want to move on to another client? Are there other ways to implement 'tagging' instead of a hierarchy? Patrick. -- STAR Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. http://www.star-group.net/ Phone: +86 (21) 3462 7688 x 826 Fax: +86 (21) 3462 7779 PGP key: https://stshacom1.star-china.net/keys/patrick_nagel.asc Fingerprint: E09A D65E 855F B334 E5C3 5386 EF23 20FC E883 A005

4 8

[Dovecot] Certificate Server name!
by kbajwa 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

I previously posted this message and made a type mistake. I wrote "imap.tib.com instead it should red "imap.example.com". I have corrected the message and am reposting it. SORRY. ----------------------------------------- Setup of Dovecot went smoothly. Now when I try to retrieve mail from the server, I get the following message: Security Error: Domain name mismatch You have attempted to establish a connection to "mail.tib.com" However, the security certificate presented belongs to "imap.example.com"..... How to fix this message? Thanks in advance. Kirt

4 4

[Dovecot] PATCH: flexible array members in dovecot 1.1
by John Lightsey 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

It looks like the build problems with the flexible array members in Dovecot 1.1 and GCC 2.95 has been raised several times already on this list, but no one mentioned out that autoconf 2.61+ provides a macro to deal with these.

2 1

[Dovecot] Unknown dict module: db with expire plugin
by Nicolas Letellier 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

Hello. I upgraded my dovecot to 1.1. I use the FreeBSD port. However, I can't use the expire plugin. See the error: Unknown dict module: db expire plugin: dict_init() failed I see on the mailing list another mail like this problem. And the problem is the imap library is not linked to libdb. Is there a solution? Have I to contact the FreeBSD maintainer to link the binary to the library? Thanks for your advices. Regards, -- - Nicolas.

2 1

[Dovecot] dovecot 1.1.1 dbox public namespace problem
by Robert Schetterer 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

Hi @ll i have somthing like namespace public { separator = / prefix = "public/" location = dbox:/usr/local/virtual/%d/public inbox = no list = yes subscriptions = yes hidden = no } which works nice if i set location = maildir:/usr/local/virtual/%d/public %d expansion works right with maildir but if user mailboxes are on dbox with public namespace too, dovecot produces %d directory on the filesystem in /usr/local/virtual/ ,instead of expansion named domainname directory at new user creation time invoked from mail by lda i guess its some config bug from me but i cant find somthing, same config with maildir works nice, maybe some variables differ using dbox ( ie. with home and location ) -- Best Regards MfG Robert Schetterer Germany/Munich/Bavaria

2 2

[Dovecot] 1.1 and the zlib plugin
by Kyle Wheeler 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

Hello, I've been playing around with using namespaces to change the way messages are stored. My idea was to use mbox for archival stuff, like this: namespace private { separator = . hidden = no inbox = yes prefox = location = maildir:%h/Maildir } namespace private { separator = . hidden = no prefix = "INBOX.Archive." location = mbox:%h/Maildir/Archive } This works *GREAT*, and I'm really pleased with it. However, it occurred to me that for deeply frozen archives, it might be nice to gzip them. Conveniently, there's the zlib plugin. From what I could tell from the documentation, the compressed mbox names must end in ".gz", so I thought I could simply go into ~/Maildir/Archive and gzip everything. But when I did that, Dovecot started behaving strangely. First of all, the result of LIST shows the files like this: * LIST (\NoInferiors \Marked) "." "INBOX.Archive.Friends.gz" Which is obviously wrong. When I try to SELECT it, I get this: ? SELECT "INBOX.Archive.Friends.gz" ? NO Mailbox doesn't exist: Friends/gz Which seems to indicate that Dovecot is treating the dot in the extension as the separator (understandably), and failing. However, if I leave off the extension, I get this: ? SELECT "INBOX.Archive.Friends" ? NO Mailbox doesn't exist: Friends Which seems to indicate that Dovecot isn't translating "Friends" into "Friends.gz" for some reason. Then I remembered that in the ChangeLog, back in May, the zlib plugin was changed to look for the zlib header rather than the Z flag. I assume that was for using it with Maildirs, but I figured it was worth a shot. So I renamed the Friends.gz file to remove the extension. But that just gives me an error message: ? SELECT "INBOX.Archive.Friends" ? NO Mailbox isn't a valid mbox file It seems like loading the zlib plugin either doesn't have any effect, or I'm not doing it right. I have it in the config file along with other plugins that work just fine: mail_plugins = fts fts_squat zlib And when I check that with dovecot -p, it shows up: mail_plugins: fts fts_squat zlib There's no entry in the plugin {} section of the config file for the zlib plugin... but I assume that none is necessary. Am I doing something wrong? ~Kyle -- No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous. -- Samuel Johnson, on the behavior of the British colonists in America

4 6

Re: [Dovecot] Poor pop3 over nfs performance
by Mark Zealey 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

> rc11 had this fix which may be relevant: > > - dovecot-uidlist is now recreated if it results in > file shrinking > over 25%. Not sure this fix is relevent; but I have upgraded to 1.1.1 > With v1.1 INDEX=MEMORY shouldn't matter that much anymore, since it > should cache the virtual message size to dovecot-uidlist. > > 1) Do you have ,W=<size> in maildir filenames? Apparently not? No; yesterday though I did switch exim to delivering through lda - surprisingly though there was not much effect on the graphs. > 2) Do you have W=<size> added to dovecot-uidlist? I have found something here which I believe is a bug; will detail below > 3) Are your POP3 users download + delete or do they leave mail on the > server? A mixture; I believe at least 80% will download+delete; probably closer to 95% but we do have some very large mail stores - most of these would be accessed by a combination of pop and imap. > You should be able to use dotlock_use_excl=yes. ... > dotlock is the slowest locking method. Did you try how well > fcntl would > have worked? Not tried fcntl; I don't really trust nfs locking. I have enabled the excl in the config; again not much change. Now what I discovered in testing a particularly problematic user with an 800mb cur directory (under v1.1.1; I have never used v1.0 on this mbox but it was converted with your courier convert script); initially they had the following: drwx------ 2 exim exim 2048 Apr 11 2007 courierimapkeywords -rw-r--r-- 1 exim exim 47 Apr 22 15:56 courierimapsubscribed -rw-r--r-- 1 exim exim 142493 Jun 23 19:57 courierimapuiddb -rw-r--r-- 1 exim exim 195309 Jun 24 18:52 courierpop3dsizelist drwx------ 2 exim exim 499712 Jul 2 10:35 cur -rw------- 1 exim exim 20912 Jul 2 10:51 dovecot.index -rw------- 1 exim exim 33056 Jun 17 17:34 dovecot.index.cache -rw------- 1 exim exim 31336 Jul 2 10:37 dovecot.index.log -rw------- 1 exim exim 158465 Jul 2 10:13 dovecot-uidlist drwx------ 2 exim exim 4096 Jul 2 10:29 new -rw------- 1 exim exim 23 Jun 24 22:49 subscriptions drwx------ 2 exim exim 2048 Jul 2 10:42 tmp As you can see, the cache file is very old, and the uidlist file is behind the last time that the logged in (which was 10:35). When I log in over pop and do a stat/list, it re-reads everything in cur/new but didn't update the dovecot-uidlist file or the index.cache file (the log file is updated though). Dovecot-uidlist file does not have the extra W= tags in it. I removed the dovecot.index.cache file and performed the same login/stat/list operation and logged out, and suddenly the dovecot-uidlist file was updated to the new v1.1 format, and the directory listing looks like: total 1068 drwx------ 2 exim exim 2048 Apr 11 2007 courierimapkeywords -rw-r--r-- 1 exim exim 47 Apr 22 15:56 courierimapsubscribed -rw-r--r-- 1 exim exim 142493 Jun 23 19:57 courierimapuiddb -rw-r--r-- 1 exim exim 195309 Jun 24 18:52 courierpop3dsizelist drwx------ 2 exim exim 499712 Jul 2 10:35 cur -rw------- 1 exim exim 20912 Jul 2 10:53 dovecot.index -rw------- 1 exim exim 31428 Jul 2 10:53 dovecot.index.log -rw------- 1 exim exim 175508 Jul 2 10:53 dovecot-uidlist drwx------ 2 exim exim 4096 Jul 2 10:29 new -rw------- 1 exim exim 23 Jun 24 22:49 subscriptions drwx------ 2 exim exim 2048 Jul 2 10:42 tmp This looks like a bug to me; I will have a look in the source and see if I can find anything, but I thought I'd send this email as you'll be able to find the bug faster than I can. Thanks, Mark

2 1

[Dovecot] POP3 Mails Not Deleted
by imacat 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

Dear all, Hi. This is imacat from Taiwan. We are running Dovecot 1.1.1. I received complaints from one of my colleagues. She checks her mails both from home and from office, so she left her mails in the server for 3 days. This morning she got lots of received mails again. I tracked the syslog, and found the following records: ============ Jul 2 18:39:59 odin dovecot: POP3(mindyw): Disconnected: Logged out top=0/0, retr=0/0, del=0/577, size=55354063 Jul 3 11:59:17 odin dovecot: POP3(mindyw): Disconnected: Logged out top=0/0, retr=99/4866408, del=287/676, size=60218727 Jul 3 12:05:19 odin dovecot: POP3(mindyw): Disconnected: Logged out top=0/0, retr=288/35132998, del=2/677, size=60220846 Jul 3 12:09:58 odin dovecot: POP3(mindyw): Disconnected: Logged out top=0/0, retr=2/9289, del=2/675, size=60190368 ============ It seems that the deleted 287 mails was not really deleted, though the second deletion works. This happens occationally, so I cannot easily reproduce it. Can anyone look into this issue? How can I debug further? Thank you very much in advance. -- imacat ^_*' imacat(a)mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key: http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman's Voice http://www.wov.idv.tw/ TLUG List Manager http://www.linux.org.tw/mailman/listinfo/tlug

3 3

[Dovecot] Q: imaptest license
by seriv＠parkheights.dyndns.org 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

Hi Timo, I can't find licensing information in http://hg.dovecot.org/imaptest. Can you tell what is the license for this utility? I'd like to package it for ALTLinux Sisyphus repository. -- Sergey Ivanov

2 2

[Dovecot] imap-login: socketpair() failed: Too many open files
by Manoel Prazeres 12 Jul '08

12 Jul '08

Hi, I'am trying to use heartbeat to start dovecot... It starts but all the login connections are reject with this line on log file: Jul 7 12:47:28 markov dovecot: imap-login: socketpair() failed: Too many open files No username/password are asked (using Thunderbird as client). Outside heartbeat, dovecot runs fine. My environment: # dovecot --version 1.1.1 # uname -a Linux markov.impa.br 2.6.18-53.1.21.el5xen #1 SMP Tue May 20 10:03:27 EDT 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux # df -H /dovecot (the indexes - a drbd disk) Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/drbd0 5.3G 146M 4.9G 3% /dovecot # df -H /data/mail (the mailboxes - a nfs disk) Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on nfs.impa.br:/data/mail 158G 95G 56G 63% /data/mail # dovecot -n # 1.1.1: /etc/dovecot.conf syslog_facility: local5 protocols: imap imaps listen: 127.0.0.1:143 ssl_listen: 147.65.1.46:993 disable_plaintext_auth: yes login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_log_format_elements: user=<%u> method=%m pid=%p rip=%r lip=%l %c login_processes_count: 32 login_max_processes_count: 512 first_valid_uid: 8 first_valid_gid: 12 mail_location: mbox:%h/mail:INBOX=%h/mbox:INDEX=/dovecot/imapd.indexes/%u mbox_read_locks: dotlock fcntl mbox_write_locks: dotlock fcntl mail_log_prefix: %Us(%u): pid=%p, rip=%r, lip=%l, auth default: passdb: driver: passwd-file args: /etc/dovecot.deny deny: yes passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd Any suggestion? Thanks Manoel

2 1