- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] POP3 flag updates
by Timo Sirainen 28 Jun '09

28 Jun '09

Why does Dovecot add \Seen flag for mails that have been RETRed? Does anyone really want to use this feature? I can't remember why I implemented it originally, perhaps it was just "because other servers do that too". I'm thinking about at least changing pop3_no_flag_updates=yes to be default. There's also of course pop3_enable_last setting to enable LAST command which was removed from POP3 specs. That requires knowing the last RETRed mail, so I guess I should add a check that it can't be enabled without pop3_no_flag_updates=no.

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[Dovecot] Spliting Folders for Efficiency
by Daniel Watts 28 Jun '09

28 Jun '09

Dear Timo, Would there be any sense in giving Dovecot the option to split folders into multiple subfolders when they reached a specified size (probably message count) limit? Dovecot would monitor folders and when they reached, say, 10,000 messages, silently split the folder on the filesystem to ensure that access remains fast. I know that Dovecot scales very well but this would give practically unlimited storage capability and also keep things fast. You could even have it so that the latest 100 messages are kept in their own folder for fast access. .Folder.new .Folder.cur .Folder.tmp could become: .Folder__1.new .Folder__1.cur .Folder__1.tmp and .Folder__2.new .Folder__2.cur .Folder__2.tmp with Dovecot merging them before display as just "Folder" within the mail client. This could be further extended so that Dovecot could be configured to store 'old' message folders in a separate location. We could then have slower+cheaper+larger storage mounted so that 'old mail' does not take up the expensive local SCSI disks on the machine. Mail from 2 years ago is much less likely to be accessed than mail from the last week. This would provide very neat behind-the-scenes archiving functionality. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Best, Daniel -- Squirrelmail Stable 1.4.8 (and developing on 1.5.2) PHP 5.x Hardened with Eaccelerator Apache 2.x Mysql 5.0.x Imapproxy over Dovecot 1.0.rc27 with Maildir all running on Gentoo Linux for ~5,000 users.

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[Dovecot] Sieve/ManageSieve integration into pkgsrc
by Edgar Fuß 28 Jun '09

28 Jun '09

I'm integrating Sieve (the new one) and ManageSieve into wip/dovecot. Currently, this works as dovecot options because dovecot must be built before sieve can be configured and sieve must be built before managesieve can be configured/built. Now, the question arose what the long-term solution (in pkgsrc) should be. To my understanding, with dovecot 2.0, ManageSieve will no longer need to patch dovecot. But what about both Sieve and ManageSieve depending on doevcot sources in order to build (or on libraries dovecot only builds internally)? The preferred way (for pkgsrc) would be if both Sieve and ManageSieve could be built as stand-alone packages and not needing a dovecot source tree to build. What's the long-term plan for Sieve/ManageSieve in this respect? The pkgsrc infrastructure (intentionally) doesn't like a package depending on anothers package working directory in order to build. So with these cross-dependencies, the only pkgsrc ways to go would be either to build it all as one package with options (that's what I currently do) or extract, patch, configure and build dovecot inside a sieve package.

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[Dovecot] dovecot and vmailmgr/qmail mailboxes
by Mij 26 Jun '09

26 Jun '09

Hello folks, Time ago I worked on a patch for dovecot to work with vmailmgr http://mij.oltrelinux.com/net/dovecot-qmail-vmailmgr/ The patch was required because, despite vmailmgr complies with the checkpassword interface supported by dovecot, dovecot snips the mailbox directory returned by the authentication module at colon characters ':'. Incidentally, vmailmgr maps any "name.surname@domain" to "~domain/users/name:surname" (a standard practice in the qmail world, see eg http://www.qmail.org/man/man5/dot-qmail.html at "For security") This path dovecot would then parse as "~domain/users/name". An authentication module can't do anything about it, as this is due to dovecot collecting accounting information in one common buffer, tokenized by ':' separators. I soon stopped updating the patch because I didn't see much point in running indefinitely after releases. However, a bunch of people wrote me over the last years asking for details or updates. Partially for having a similar requirement myself, partially drafted by such feedback, I recently wrote a "compromise" wrapper solution (attached). It does not require patching dovecot (external module) and it's thus (supposedly) durable across dovecot releases; however, it cannot help with the colon problem. The wrapper works as follows: 1) compile and install: # cc -O2 -Wall -o checkvpw-dovecot-wrapper checkvpw-dovecot-wrapper.c # install -s -o root checkvpw-dovecot-wrapper /usr/local/bin 2) edit dovecot.conf, setup the auth section as follows: ============ auth default { mechanism = plain passdb checkpassword { args = /usr/local/bin/checkvpw-dovecot-wrapper } userdb prefetch { } user = root } ============ If "name.surname@domain" wants to be created, the administrator shall instead create the user "namesurname@domain" and an alias "name.surname@domain" pointing to it. This may be conceivable for new installations, but it is not for scenarios where dovecot is to replace another server on top of an existing user base. Of course, it's very desirable to support "." users too. I see that it would require several changes in the code, but I'd like to hear your opinion on this. What about - using a different separator than ":", less common and safer. Could '\0' be one? If not, what about '*'? - as a quicker & dirtier solution, what about allowing escaping? One can modify the auth module to replace ":" with "\:", if dovecot is instructed to avoid tokenizing when a "\" precedes a ":". - as an alternative, dovecot may require the module to chdir() to the mailbox directory instead of returning its path as a string, and subsequently operate locally on mailbox-relative paths. I can't guess how compatible this is with the current design. In the next days, I will publish such wrapper to the webpage. For your convenience, I will invite interested users to show up on this thread; this should help you in assessing how this is interesting for people. bye

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Re: [Dovecot] Lots of pop3-logins
by V S Rao 26 Jun '09

26 Jun '09

> > Doing a "ps aux" on my Slackware box, I have approx 100 PID's of "pop3-login's going on. This is a production mail server, but it is getting VERY low traffic. In fact, only 3 people can "pop3" into it. I've check their e-mail clients, and they are not checking mail any more often than every 5 minutes. > > > > This is a new installation and I've had the server up and running since Sunday. If it matters, I'm using Postfix for the MTA and using the Dovecot SASL library to AUTH SMTP. > > > > Is this a cause for concern? Why does Dovecot need this many processes? > > > > >> Because dovecot preforks the *-login processes to speed-up the login. > > >> No need to worry. > > 100 login sessions for just 3 connections? That is not right, no matter what. >> No, login_processes_count matters. How? If my understanding is correct, you have extra 3 login processes created to cater to new connections. So with only 3 POP3 users, why should so many login processes be spawned? I can understand 10-15. But 100 definitely indicates either the processes are not dying or something else happening on the system which is causing such high number of login processes. The system definitely needs to be checked for some kind of attack, a rogue process running on the system or something else. Regards --Rao

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[Dovecot] dovecot-acl-list not honouring owner / permissions that are set on dovecot-shared
by Stuart Rowan 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

Hi, I've just upgraded our dovecot installation from 1.0.15 to 1.1.13. This went smoothly and just worked -- thank you very much for writing such a high performance and robust piece of software. However, we have a shared mailbox that people can subscribe to. After upgrading to 1.1.13 ... dovecot tries to create a dovecot-acl-list file in the top level of this ... but it creates it chown'd to the first logged in user with a umask of -rw- --- --- A. -rw------- 1 userA shared 17179 2009-06-25 11:10 /home/imapshared/SharedMaildir/dovecot-acl-list Everyone else who tried to access the shared folder (and hence dovecot tried to read / update the dovecot-acl-list file) caused an error to be logged to the error.log I changed the permissions (once I realised what had gone wrong) to match those on the dovecot-shared file and all was well as everyone can now read/update it. B. -rw-rw---- 1 imapshared shared 17179 2009-06-25 11:19 /home/imapshared/SharedMaildir/dovecot-acl-list -rw-rw---- 1 imapshared shared 0 2008-04-25 13:20 /home/imapshared/SharedMaildir/dovecot-shared Also from time to time the permissions seem to get changed back on dovecot-acl-list inexplicably to those in situation A -- usually following a restart of dovecot but I haven't been able to reproduce this reliably. This seems like a bug to me ... do you agree / is there a sensible work-around? The declaration in dovecot.conf for the shared namespace sets user specific CONTROL and INDEX locations so that users can independently subscribe to folders and mark messages as read on an individual basis. Many thanks, Stu.

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Re: [Dovecot] Lots of pop3-logins
by V S Rao 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

> Hello, > > Doing a "ps aux" on my Slackware box, I have approx 100 PID's of "pop3-login's going on. This is a production mail server, but it is getting VERY low traffic. In fact, only 3 people can "pop3" into it. I've check their e-mail clients, and they are not checking mail any more often than every 5 minutes. > > This is a new installation and I've had the server up and running since Sunday. If it matters, I'm using Postfix for the MTA and using the Dovecot SASL library to AUTH SMTP. > > Is this a cause for concern? Why does Dovecot need this many processes? > >> Because dovecot preforks the *-login processes to speed-up the login. >> No need to worry. 100 login sessions for just 3 connections? That is not right, no matter what. There is definitely some issue. Once the load increases the system will start timing out on POP3 connections or other network connections, such as IMAP, SSH etc. Better check out the system logs, utilization etc. for any abnormal values. Regards Rao

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[Dovecot] Lots of pop3-logins
by Rodman Frowert 25 Jun '09

25 Jun '09

Hello, Doing a "ps aux" on my Slackware box, I have approx 100 PID's of "pop3-login's going on. This is a production mail server, but it is getting VERY low traffic. In fact, only 3 people can "pop3" into it. I've check their e-mail clients, and they are not checking mail any more often than every 5 minutes. This is a new installation and I've had the server up and running since Sunday. If it matters, I'm using Postfix for the MTA and using the Dovecot SASL library to AUTH SMTP. Is this a cause for concern? Why does Dovecot need this many processes? Thanks! Rodman

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Re: [Dovecot] deliver does not update maildirsize
by ftriboix＠falcon-one.com 24 Jun '09

24 Jun '09

Hi Timo, Thank you very much for replying! > What does your configuration look like now? v1.1 has different quota > configuration. Is the problem only with deliver, or is imap also not > updating quota? And dovecot -n unfortunately doesn't show > protocol lda {} contents, so could you show them too? And finally, > enable mail_debug=yes and paste its logs when a message is delivered. mail_debug was already enabled, actually. maildirsize is not updated with imap now. If I logged in imap with dovecot 1.0.13, maildirsize was updated. This is not the case anymore with dovecot 1.1.16 ... I am actually realizing something. Do I need to add the "quota" plugin in the "protocol lda {}" section of dovecot.conf? Please find the configuration information below: # dovecot -n # 1.1.16: /etc/dovecot-1.1.16/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 2.6.27.10-grsec-xxxx-grs-ipv4-32 i686 Debian 4.0 ext3 base_dir: /var/dovecot-1.1.16 log_path: /var/dovecot-1.1.16/log/errors.log info_log_path: /var/dovecot-1.1.16/log/info.log ssl_disable: yes disable_plaintext_auth: no login_dir: /var/dovecot-1.1.16/login login_executable: /usr/local/dovecot-1.1.16/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_user: ldovecotlogin mail_location: maildir:/var/vmail/%d/%n mail_debug: yes mail_plugins: quota imap_quota auth default: mechanisms: plain login user: nobody chroot: /var/dovecot-1.1.16 verbose: yes debug: yes debug_passwords: yes passdb: driver: sql args: /etc/dovecot-1.1.16/dovecot-mysql-passdb.conf userdb: driver: sql args: /etc/dovecot-1.1.16/dovecot-mysql-userdb.conf socket: type: listen client: path: /var/postfix-2.5.1/private/auth.dovecot mode: 432 user: lpostfix group: lpostfix master: path: /var/dovecot-1.1.16/auth-master mode: 384 user: vmail group: vmail plugin: quota: maildir:Quota protocol lda { # Address to use when sending rejection mails. postmaster_address = postmaster@MyDomain # Hostname to use in various parts of sent mails, eg. in Message-Id. # Default is the system's real hostname. #hostname = # Support for dynamically loadable plugins. mail_plugins is a space separated # list of plugins to load. #mail_plugins = #mail_plugin_dir = /usr/lib/dovecot/lda # Binary to use for sending mails. #sendmail_path = /usr/lib/sendmail # UNIX socket path to master authentication server to find users. #auth_socket_path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master log_path = /var/dovecot-1.1.16/log/delivery.log auth_socket_path = /var/dovecot-1.1.16/auth-master } # egrep '^deliver.test' info.log | tail deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: auth input: uid=5000 deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: auth input: gid=5000 deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: auth input: mail=maildir:/home/vmail/MyDomain/test deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: auth input: home=/home/vmail/MyDomain/test/home deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: auth input: quota=maildir:Quota deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: auth input: quota_rule=*:storage=1024 deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: auth input: quota_rule2=Trash:storage=50M deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: Home dir not found: /home/vmail/MyDomain/test/home deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: maildir: data=/home/vmail/MyDomain/test deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: maildir++: root=/home/vmail/MyDomain/test, index=, control=, inbox=/home/vmail/MyDomain/test deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 13:28:35 Info: msgid=<290034.94281.qm(a)web24608.mail.ird.yahoo.com>: saved mail to INBOX deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: auth input: uid=5000 deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: auth input: gid=5000 deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: auth input: mail=maildir:/home/vmail/MyDomain/test deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: auth input: home=/home/vmail/MyDomain/test/home deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: auth input: quota=maildir:Quota deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: auth input: quota_rule=*:storage=1024 deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: auth input: quota_rule2=Trash:storage=50M deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: Home dir not found: /home/vmail/MyDomain/test/home deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: maildir: data=/home/vmail/MyDomain/test deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: maildir++: root=/home/vmail/MyDomain/test, index=, control=, inbox=/home/vmail/MyDomain/test deliver(test@MyDomain): Jun 24 16:59:57 Info: msgid=<542353.92671.qm(a)web24614.mail.ird.yahoo.com>: saved mail to INBOX # cat maildirsize 1048576S 1846384 10 Best regards, Fabrice

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[Dovecot] Quota_rules ignored
by A. Gideonse 24 Jun '09

24 Jun '09

Today I upgraded to version 1.1.16 of Dovecot (and Sieve), because I wanted to use mailbox quotas. I tried using the instructions on http://wiki.dovecot.org/Quota/1.1 and simular websites for 4 hours now, but it seems that all quota_rules are ignored. Also, whenever I use a '*' in my MySQL query I get the error: 'unknown quota backend'. With the following query the quota from the database is used (if value is not NULL), but the quota_rules are ignored once again: user_query = SELECT maildir AS home, 5000 AS uid, 5000 AS gid, CONCAT('maildir:storage=', quota) AS quota FROM mailbox WHERE username = '%u' Below is my configuration: # 1.1.16: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 2.6.24-19-virtual i686 Ubuntu 8.04.1 nfs log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s ssl_disable: yes disable_plaintext_auth: no login_dir: /usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login login_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login mail_privileged_group: mail mail_location: maildir:/data/vmail/%d/%n mail_debug: yes mmap_disable: yes dotlock_use_excl: no mbox_write_locks: fcntl mail_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap mail_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap mail_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3 mail_plugins(default): quota imap_quota mail_plugins(imap): quota imap_quota mail_plugins(pop3): quota mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/pop3 auth default: mechanisms: plain login debug: yes passdb: driver: sql args: /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf userdb: driver: passwd userdb: driver: sql args: /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf userdb: driver: static args: uid=5000 gid=5000 home=/home/vmail/%d/%n allow_all_users=yes socket: type: listen client: path: /var/spool/postfix/private/auth mode: 432 user: postfix group: postfix master: path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-master mode: 384 user: vmail plugin: quota: maildir:User quota quota_rule: *:storage=1G quota_rule2: .Trash:storage=100M Any thoughts on how to solve this problem? Thanks in advance!

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