December 2023 - dovecot

2.4 ballpark release date?
by Shawn Heisey 05 Apr '24

05 Apr '24

I'm wondering whether there is a ballpark release date for Dovecot 2.4. I know an exact release date is probably not available, but can it at least be narrowed to a specific quarter? Is it likely in 2023? I have seen on previous messages that an Ubuntu repository for 22.04 (jammy) will appear with the 2.4 release. My mail server in AWS is running Ubuntu 20.04 (focal), which I have avoided upgrading for various reasons, including websites that don't work with PHP 8.1. Now the last remaining hurdle is the fact that there is no dovecot repository for jammy. I would prefer the official Dovecot repo over dovecot packages included with Ubuntu, because it's likely to be a newer release, and built from vanilla project code. At the moment jammy includes dovecot 2.3.16, which is even older than the 2.3.20 that I am running on focal from the official dovecot repo. Again, I know that a precise release date won't be possible. I'm just hoping for something like "soon" or "in about six months." Thanks, Shawn

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[Dovecot] doveadm delete folders ?
by Robert Schetterer 19 Feb '24

19 Feb '24

Hi , is there a feature like doveadm expunge savedbefore ... for imap folder delete ? -- Best Regards MfG Robert Schetterer Germany/Munich/Bavaria

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Recommended changes for delivery from Exim
by jgh＠exim.org 05 Feb '24

05 Feb '24

Hi, Security changes to Exim have invalidated certain suggested configurations in the Dovecot wiki. As I do not have a Dovecot installation to test, I am not going to write any updates there. It would be good if someone would test these suggestions and then make updates as needed. 1) The use of $local_part and $domain in commands run by the "pipe" transport will be disallowed in the upcoming Exim release. These are currently noted as optional, with the "-m" flag to dovecot-lda. They should be replaced with validated (untainted) versions, commonly $local_part_data and $domain_data, developed via one of the several de-taint methods documented for Exim. The same applies to $original_local_part and $original_domain. 2) The use of $sender_address will likewise be disallowed. This and the "-f" flag can be dropped from the dovecot-lda command line, and the specification of a null "message_prefix" option removed. The defaults for a pipe transport will then prefix the message with a suitable Mbox "From " header line, which dovecot-lda is documented to extract the sender from. Both of these suggestions are back-compatible to the current 4.95 release of Exim, and will be required with the 4.96 release. -- Cheers, Jeremy Refs: - https://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA/Exim - https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/protocols/lda/

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JMAP support?
by Mark Constable 31 Jan '24

31 Jan '24

On Fri Jan 25 2019 Aki wrote: > There is no JMAP support in any dovecot version yet. Two years on so what is the status of JMAP support in Dovecot now?

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Replication going away?
by Vladimir Mishonov 26 Jan '24

26 Jan '24

Hello everyone. Just saw this commit in the official Github repo: https://github.com/dovecot/core/commit/4c04e4c30fd4817a8b0e11d04d9681173f69… Looking at the commit details, it appears that it completely removes the replication feature. I'm a bit perplexed by this change and am not sure what might be the justification for it. Personally, I find replication to be very useful, as it allows me to maintain a synchronized mirror of all of my mailboxes on my home server, for use as backup in case the primary server goes down for some reason. Perhaps there's some sort of replacement being planned for this feature? Or maybe the relevant code is simply going to be refactored to a plugin or external program, and there's nothing to worry about at all? In any case, I'd greatly appreciate if one of the developers could comment on this change. -- Kind regards, a concerned user of Dovecot (Vladimir)

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master-users problem
by Barbara M. 20 Jan '24

20 Jan '24

I am trying to activate master-users as usual but seems in this case I am doing something wrong and I can't have it working. It is a Rocky Linux 9.x (in Proxmox CT), installed with virtualmin and using system users: # doveconf -n # 2.3.16 (7e2e900c1a): /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 6.5.11-4-pve x86_64 Rocky Linux release 9.3 (Blue Onyx) auth_master_user_separator = * auth_mechanisms = plain login disable_plaintext_auth = no first_valid_uid = 1000 mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir mbox_write_locks = fcntl namespace inbox { inbox = yes location = mailbox Drafts { special_use = \Drafts } mailbox Junk { special_use = \Junk } mailbox Sent { special_use = \Sent } mailbox "Sent Messages" { special_use = \Sent } mailbox Trash { special_use = \Trash } prefix = } passdb { args = /etc/dovecot/master-users driver = passwd-file master = yes result_success = continue } passdb { driver = pam } protocols = imap pop3 ssl = required ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem ssl_cipher_list = PROFILE=SYSTEM ssl_key = # hidden, use -P to show it userdb { driver = passwd } Any hints on what I am doing wrong and/or how to debug it? Thanks, B.

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Forcing imap authentication failure for certain IP addresses
by Hippo Man 20 Jan '24

20 Jan '24

I'm running dovecot 2.3.18 under Debian 11. I want to do something that's a bit unusual: when IMAP connections are attempted from a few specific IP addresses, I want to force an IMAP authentication failure from those connections, no matter what user ID and password are specified. I know that I can use iptables to completely block imap access from those IP addresses to the IMAP ports. However, in these specific cases, I'd prefer that the connection goes through to dovecot, but for dovecot then to always generate authentication failures for those specific connections ... even if a valid user ID and password happen to be specified. Is there a way to do this in dovecot? Thank you very much in advance. -- hippoman(a)gmail.com Take a hippopotamus to lunch today. .---------, 0__0 / ( oo'---, / oo\ ,\ | | \ ,=__/ \ / / /------| /| |__|-' |__|'

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ARM support
by Brad Koehn 15 Jan '24

15 Jan '24

Hey there, I was wondering if you’re planning to support ARM in your packages and/or Docker images. Right now I’m stuck on whatever ships with Debian for ARM64 architectures. Otherwise, suggestions how would I go about building them myself? In a modern build world, it’s fairly straightforward, especially with Docker to handle all the emulation. Thanks for such a great product! I’ve used Dovecot on my little server for over twenty years. — Brad Koehn Hey there, I was wondering if you’re planning to support ARM in your packages and/or Docker images. Right now I’m stuck on whatever ships with Debian for ARM64 architectures. Otherwise, suggestions how would I go about building them myself? In a modern build world, it’s fairly straightforward, especially with Docker to handle all the emulation. Thanks for such a great product! I’ve used Dovecot on my little server for over twenty years. — Brad Koehn

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Panic: file index-search-result.c: line 132 (index_search_result_update_flags): assertion failed: (result->search_args->args == &search_arg)
by Markus Doits 14 Jan '24

14 Jan '24

Hello dovecot community, I hope you can help me with the following panic: --- Panic: file index-search-result.c: line 132 (index_search_result_update_flags): assertion failed: (result->search_args->args == &search_arg) Error: Raw backtrace: /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(backtrace_append+0x46) [0x7f839a045846] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(backtrace_get+0x22) [0x7f839a045962] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(+0x10d81b) [0x7f839a05281b] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(+0x10d8b7) [0x7f839a0528b7] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(+0x5e2e2) [0x7f8399fa32e2] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot-storage.so.0(+0x518a4) [0x7f839a1768a4] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/lib20_virtual_plugin.so(virtual_storage_sync_init+0x274e) [0x7f8399ea4a9e] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot-storage.so.0(mailbox_sync_init+0x5c) [0x7f839a192f9c] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot-storage.so.0(mailbox_sync+0x39) [0x7f839a193039] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot-storage.so.0(index_storage_get_status+0x37) [0x7f839a210467] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/lib20_virtual_plugin.so(+0xc6c5) [0x7f8399e9f6c5] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/lib20_fts_plugin.so(+0x145e2) [0x7f8399ee65e2] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/lib01_acl_plugin.so(+0x10cb9) [0x7f8399f31cb9] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot-storage.so.0(mailbox_get_status+0x64) [0x7f839a1935a4] -> dovecot/imap(imap_status_get+0x98) [0x55c63c180748] -> dovecot/imap(cmd_status+0x19e) [0x55c63c170a7e] -> dovecot/imap(command_exec+0xa4) [0x55c63c177444] -> dovecot/imap(+0x22392) [0x55c63c175392] -> dovecot/imap(+0x22444) [0x55c63c175444] -> dovecot/imap(client_handle_input+0x1bd) [0x55c63c17589d] -> dovecot/imap(client_input+0x74) [0x55c63c175e64] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(io_loop_call_io+0x6d) [0x7f839a06903d] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(io_loop_handler_run_internal+0x13a) [0x7f839a06a7aa] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(io_loop_handler_run+0x54) [0x7f839a0690e4] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(io_loop_run+0x40) [0x7f839a0692a0] -> /usr/lib/dovecot/libdovecot.so.0(master_service_run+0x17) [0x7f8399fd9ad7] -> dovecot/imap(main+0x570) [0x55c63c166d20] -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x29d90) [0x7f8399c29d90] -> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0x80) [0x7f8399c29e40] -> dovecot/imap(_start+0x25) [0x55c63c166de5] Fatal: master: service(imap): child 793983 killed with signal 6 (core dumped) --- Happening on ubuntu 22.04, dovecot 2.3.21 from [this ubuntu ppa](https://launchpad.net/~patrickdk/+archive/ubuntu/production/+packages?… dovecot-core:amd64 1:2.3.21-0a~jammy dovecot-dev:amd64 1:2.3.21-0a~jammy dovecot-imapd:amd64 1:2.3.21-0a~jammy dovecot-ldap:amd64 1:2.3.21-0a~jammy dovecot-lmtpd:amd64 1:2.3.21-0a~jammy dovecot-sieve:amd64 1:2.3.21-0a~jammy dovecot-solr:amd64 1:2.3.21-0a~jammy --- I have this virtual mailbox configured: namespace { prefix = _/ separator = / location = virtual:~/Maildir/virtual:LAYOUT=maildir++:INDEX=~/Maildir/virtual } When I remove this mailbox, the error goes away - so it seems to be something with the virtual mailbox. As the fts provider I use [fts_flatcurve](https://slusarz.github.io/dovecot-fts-flatcurve), maybe this has something to do with it? Any help appreciated how to debug this further and maybe fix it. Thanks!

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Unconfigurable 500 ms debounce on IMAP IDLE notifications
by Alex 14 Jan '24

14 Jan '24

Hello all, I have been investigating the reason for high end-to-end email delivery delay (>1 second to send a message to echo bot and receive a reply back) on a Postfix+Dovecot email server setup used to run the tests for Delta Chat core [1]. It appeared that most of the time was spent between the submission SMTP service accepting the mail for delivery and receiving an IDLE wakeup on the other side. Looking into the Dovecot source code, I found that all notifications from the storage to callbacks set up by IDLE are delayed by a debounce constant NOTIFY_DELAY_MSECS [2]. It appears to have been added in 2009 [3], but even before that Dovecot was only delivering notifications when a second-resolution timer is changed by at least 1, so IDLE notifications probably were delayed by half a second on average even before that. Commit message says "If the notification is done immediately, IDLE may not notice the change because it's not finished yet." This sounds like a workaround for some internal Dovecot bug. I have nevertheless tried to compile Dovecot with this constant reduced from 500 ms to 1 ms [4] and it resulted in exceptionally fast delivery without any problems caused to the Delta Chat core online test suite which is using this Postfix+Dovecot server accounts. We are running all the tests against this server and it appears to work fine. Round trip time for sending a message to an echo bot and receiving a reply back is reduced from 1.1 s to 0.2 s, which is easily visible in a chat app [5]. I wonder if this debounce delay was added as a workaround for an internal Dovecot bug or a client bug and is not necessary anymore. It does not seem to be useful for well-behaving clients because if necessary the client may debounce notifications on its side and postpone interrupting IDLE with "DONE". I would actually like to disable this delay completely on our server setup [6], as for chat it is common to receive multiple messages in a short period of time, e.g. when sending a message to a group and receiving multiple read receipts from currently active users. [1] https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/ [2] https://github.com/dovecot/core/blob/93a53a9d590f0220de28600f36a969cc38c314… [3] https://github.com/dovecot/core/commit/56fb5d09955b6097f77b341717fd9b70e9f1… [4] https://github.com/deltachat/chatmail/issues/72#issuecomment-1806645153 [5] https://delta.chat/assets/blog/nine-echo.mp4 [6] https://github.com/deltachat/chatmail Best regards, Alex

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