- dovecot - dovecot.org

[dovecot] Re: [bincimap] Re: Re: bincimap
by Ian R. Justman 18 Feb '03

18 Feb '03

On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Andreas Aardal Hanssen wrote: > >> It even recently included a POP server. What's the reasoning there? > >Someone wanted it so it'd be easy to run both POP3 and IMAP servers > >without having to configure them twice. I don't see any harm in it > >anyway, it took only few hours to write, it's optional and doesn't take > >much space in sources. > > Here's where I would say - there are hundreds of working POP3 servers > around, both in closed and open source, so adding a POP3 server to the > Dovecot project just introduces more lines of code where bugs may appear > ;). Here is what -I- would say: I use mbox on all my servers which I have absolutely no intention of changing despite the issues concerning file locking inherent in the whole mbox format. So please, --NO-- attempts to convince me to go to maildir. My take is that if I am going to use an IMAP server, it would be VERY nice if a POP3 server also came bundled with it. Dovecot's having both IMAP and POP3 servers is great because they will likely use the same file-locking schemes (in fact, probably even share the same locking settings). That way if I inadvertently start up a POP3 session while I am connected via IMAP, if they use identical locking mechanisms, I don't screw up my mailboxes should I inadvertently tell my system that I want to delete the messages from my mailbox. Basically, if you open via IMAP using a server with a diffent locking scheme while your hung POP3 session is still running AND you modify your mailbox, you are screwed. Especially if that mailstore is NFS-shared, which is always a dicey proposition. Additionally, the number of mbox POP3 servers which Do Not Suck(R) is rather low right now. Timo finally introduced an mbox IMAP server which definitely Does Not Suck, notably it allows for multiple clients accessing the same mbox mailstore, something previously only offered by Cyrus and perhaps maildir ("perhaps" only because I do not use maildir). Not to mention, quite frankly, most mbox POP3 implementations suck pretty badly anyway. :P --Ian.

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[dovecot] Re: [bincimap] bincimap
by Timo Sirainen 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

On Mon, 2003-02-17 at 11:33, Andreas Aardal Hanssen wrote: > Binc IMAP's approaches are to use a secure programming language with > secure well-known contructs, and with an as-simple-as-possible design, > making it very easy for everyone to grasp how the server works. This will > also help the community find and fix bugs. I kind of agree, but not at the expense of security. I have tried to keep my code clean and ugly-optimization-free anyway. > Here's where I would say - there are hundreds of working POP3 servers > around, both in closed and open source, so adding a POP3 server to the > Dovecot project just introduces more lines of code where bugs may appear > ;). Yes, and I wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been so easy. I don't really encourage people to use it anyway, it's even disabled by default. If it has bugs, it doesn't affect the IMAP side. If people really need to run both IMAP and POP3 servers, it is simpler to use the same configuration for both, especially if the configuration isn't "standard" (eg. LDAP or SQL authentication, mailboxes in special locations, etc). All other major IMAP servers provide their own POP3 servers as well, if you haven't noticed :) > Donald Knuth said in a seminar that I attended that the best way to keep a > program free from bugs it to complete it. Finish off the project, work on > fixing bugs. That's Binc IMAP's philosophy. That's the ideal situation, and even possible if you keep the original goals. But there are IMAP extensions which may require large changes, new mail storage formats and ways to deliver mail into them, clustering, etc.

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[dovecot] Re: bincimap
by Timo Sirainen 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 02:54:47PM +0100, Andreas Aardal Hanssen wrote: > I can change the words in the FAQ if you feel offended by it, but you'll > have to address points individually. I never made remarks about your > personal code conventions, and I never claimed that my server "focuses on > security" in the extent that Dovecot does. > > If you want to discuss our different designs, please do it seriously, > point for point, and don't just troll around like this. Sorry, I just got a bit disappointed after reading the the web page first. Your lines of code comparisions just seemed to imply that your server does everything that others would but with only a fraction of code. There was also something about Dovecot's design being too complex, so I thought you might have solved those problems more elegantly. When you write something from scratch, I think it's a good idea to design it so that it's superior to existing implementations in at least some ways, not just make a clone with slightly different coding style. If all you wanted was a clone with some changes (and better maintainer), forking the project would be much smaller job. Well, here's some design thoughts: Maildir implementation could be hidden behind a class to access it. That would keep the ugly details hidden from the rest of the code, as well as allow easily implementing other mail storages. Restricting yourself to only plaintext authentication doesn't sound very good plan. Separating the pre-login process from post-login process would probably be a good idea to keep their functionality completely separated. It would also be easier to audit the pre-login code if you knew exactly what there is. After logging in, you could just exec() the post-login process. Don't use sprintf(). > Actually I don't get why you guys CC'd me personally on this. If you have > anything in particular you want to discuss you can post it to the mailing > list. I just thought you'd rather want to see it now than months later in google. I know I would. I didn't think it was really relevant to your mailing list, but if you say so..

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[dovecot] Re: [bincimap] Re: Re: bincimap
by Timo Sirainen 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

On Mon, 2003-02-17 at 08:28, Andreas Aardal Hanssen wrote: > I wonder what the motives for the author of Dovecot IMAP was when he > started his project. Lack of securely written code in other servers, although Courier did prove to be quite secure after all. > I wouldn't want to comment on Dovecot's design, since I'm no fan of > trolling. I don't think commenting is trolling, as long as there's truth in it, or at least honest opinions. > The project clearly has different goals than Binc. Dovecot wants > excellent features, indexing and an advanced security promoting design. Implementation security as well. I'm not sure about features. It's more about trying to be fast and light. Indexes make Dovecot comparable to Cyrus in speed, but updating them isn't required so it's still drop-in replacement for UW imapd and Courier. Index files themselves aren't really required either, but there's no option currently to disable them. > It even recently included a POP server. What's the reasoning there? Someone wanted it so it'd be easy to run both POP3 and IMAP servers without having to configure them twice. I don't see any harm in it anyway, it took only few hours to write, it's optional and doesn't take much space in sources.

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[dovecot] Brain bubbles
by Mark Lancaster 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

Hi Bit of a newbie to imap servers re: the article on webmonkey! http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/03/04/index3a_page4.html?tw=backend Been trying to set up SSL support with the latest ver. of dovecote I'm guessing that the following line from STDOUT is the problem. How to fix it is beyond my grasp currently. checking for SSL_read in -lssl... (cached) no Any ideas. ttfn Mark

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[dovecot] 0.99.8-test3
by Timo Sirainen 11 Feb '03

11 Feb '03

It includes full LDAP support now, can anyone test if it really works? It has worked with some of my tests, but I don't know too much about LDAP so I might have missed something important. The authentication problem in test1 and test2 is also fixed now.

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[dovecot] 0.99.8-test2 released
by Timo Sirainen 08 Feb '03

08 Feb '03

Fixes several smaller bugs. Finally works with FreeBSD (tested with 4.7 and 5.0). I think there's still some problems with authentication failing sometimes due to memory/ipc corruption. I haven't seen those today, but I don't think I've fixed that either.. One behaviour change is that if default_mail_env isn't set and mbox format is detected (~/mail dir), /var/mail/user or /var/spool/mail/user is used as INBOX if found.

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[dovecot] About the dovecot package (fwd)
by Jaldhar H. Vyas 07 Feb '03

07 Feb '03

Dear Timo, What do you think of this? Fyi, I've been getting the same thing lately and I'm wondering if gnutls is to blame? (i've had inexlicable SIGSEGVs in other apps before due to it.) Tomorrow I'll try with openssl but I was wondering if you had any other ideas? -- Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar(a)debian.org> La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Guille -bisho- <bisho(a)eurielec.etsit.upm.es> To: jaldhar(a)debian.org Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 02:08:19 +0100 Subject: About the dovecot package Hello! First of all thanks for maintain such a good imap server. It's trully fast and lightweight!!! I was trying Courier, but it is not very interoperable with others linux tools like procmail and others, and uw-imapd performance was really bad. I only have one problem: If I put a lot of folders to check in mutt the imapd server closes de connection saying in the logs: Jan 31 02:50:25 www imap-login: Login: bisho Jan 31 02:50:44 www imap-master: child 22234 (imap) killed with signal 11 It only happens when mutt is configured with a lot of folders. Maybe covecot loads too much indexes in memory and reachs some limit, but I have readed carefully the conf file and hadn't found anything related. Do you have any thought about that? Thanks a lot again See you -- .,,, Guillermo Pérez -=] 03/02/2003 [=- _' .,,,, - bisho@ ( onirica.com | eurielec.etsit.upm.es ) (v)/ ,'' ( \/ :: "Nuestras mayores tonterias pueden ser muy sabias." :: bisho! ``\\ :: -- Leonardo Da Vinci ::

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[dovecot] Dovecot on FreeBSD
by Karo Salminen 06 Feb '03

06 Feb '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello, I built Dovecot (0.99.5) from Ports on FreeBSD 5.0. The mail client (Kmail) cannot login and it complains that authentication process died. The only thing in the logs is: Feb 2 18:13:01 karo imap-login: Disconnected [client-ip] I tried also passwd authentication method, but its symptoms are the very same. My configure can be found at http://people.jyu.fi/~kaeesalm/dovecot.conf I also tried CVS version in hope of fix and more comprehensive debug messages. The compilation failes when it tries to look for passwd.h even though I set - --disable-passwd and --without-passwd to configure parameters. Could someone fix that. - -- Karo Salminen -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE+PUX0vt6lNXuj7xcRAp70AJ0R+zhmgF+WBaXaX2V2j+07eVyJRACgh6Ze Pmep2Uy2OnVe/EVuo9O3b80= =eqOO -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[dovecot] bincimap
by Farkas Levente 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

hi, what do you tyhink about it? especially the faq comment about dovecot? http://www.bincimap.andreas.hanssen.name/ -- Levente "Si vis pacem para bellum!"

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