- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] dovecot vs. cyrus IMAP?
by Jim Norton 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Hello all, I just learned about dovecot. I am currently using Cyrus IMAP/POP3 with Postfix on a Linux system. The one thing I don't like about Cyrus IMAP is that it doesn't support mail users who have accounts on the system. It uses it's own mailbox format and the users can't be regular system users. It would be nice to have an IMAP/POP3 server that can handle mail for users in /etc/passwd as well as the cyrus 'virtual' user type. Does dovecot only provide access to mail for users in /etc/passwd? Or can one setup email accounts for people that don't have accounts on the system ( in /etc/passwd )? Thanks, -- Jim Norton - http://www.jimnorton.org Recursion; n. see 'Recursion'

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[Dovecot] username and password not from /etc/passwd
by Zoong Pham 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Can dovecot use usernames and passwords not from /etc/passwd and be able to read mails of an user whose username and password are in /etc/passwd ? For example: - Joe Bloke has a local Unix account joe on Unix server mail.example.com - Sendmail on mail.example.com accepts mails for joe(a)example.com and put them in /var/mail/joe - can dovecot use other username/password file or database or directory rather than /etc/passwd to authenticate Joe and let him (once logs in successfully) reading mails in /var/mail/joe ? Ideally, the usernames and passwords that dovecot uses are different with the ones in /etc/passwd. Say, username is joe.bloke(a)example.com That way, Joe doesn't need to know the username and password on the Unix server at all. In summary, I want to have IMAP usernames and passwords totally different from the local Unix usernames and passwords. And users use only IMAP usernames and passwords to read their mails. I use OpenBSD-3.4, Sendmail 8.12.9, dovecot-0.99.10p0 (pre-compiled packaged from OpenBSD). Thanks, Zoong Pham

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Re: [Dovecot] Repeating downloads
by Brian T Glenn 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

[You have top-posted your message. Please refrain from doing so on technical mailing lists. It ruins the flow of the conversation as well as making archive difficult to read] [You have sent a personal reply to a mailing list message when it was not warranted. Please keep replies on the list so that everyone can benefit.] On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 04:27:01PM -0500, Paul Hanson may have written: > On Wednesday, April 07, 2004 1:14 PM Brian T Glenn wrote: > > That sounds about how POP3 works in my experience. How were you > > expecting it to behave differently? > > Well the only problem is that if they receive a new message, not only do you > get the new message but another copy of ALL messages on the server. A > scenario that I have not experienced with any other POP3 server/client > setup. The correct behavior should be to only download the new message. from doing a search on dovecot and uidl, it seems that dovecot supports these functions, which is the standard way for a pop3 server to announce unique checksums of messages. Whether or not your client software supports this is another matter. -- Brian T Glenn delink.net Internet Services

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[Dovecot] Repeating downloads
by Paul Hanson 07 Apr '04

07 Apr '04

Hey- Just wanna say that I'm really happy with Dovecot, it has worked really well for my small operation. I do have a couple problems I'd just like to bring to everyone's attention for future bugfixes and if there is a solution available. I'm using dovecot-0.99.10-6 with a clean fedora core 1 install. I'm using primarily IMAP with OpenSSL, however a few people use POP3 (over SSL) with outlook 2002 clients. The problem is that with each send and receive another copy of all messages in their Inboxes are downloaded. I have tried closing outlook restarting it etc. nothing seems to help unless I tell outlook to remove all messages from the server then outlook responds with "messages that outlook was attempting to download are no longer on the server." And problem solved. Not a huge deal but others with similar setups may be experiencing the same problems. I have postfix for my MTA, every account uses Maildir. Attached is my dovecot.conf. Thanks a lot!!! -Paul

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[Dovecot] Process died to early
by Steven Stern 07 Apr '04

07 Apr '04

Just went through this again today. Has anyone found a solution? ------------------------------------------------------ After several days of operation, POP connections fail to my server. The log message is Mar 27 15:51:46 ciscy dovecot: Login process died too early - shutting down Linux ciscy.sterndata.com 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl #1 Wed Feb 18 16:38:32 EST 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux ]# /usr/sbin/dovecot --version 0.99.10 # /etc/init.d/dovecot status dovecot (pid 6900) is running... Killing the dovecot process, deleting /var/lock/subys/dovecot, and restarting the process gets POP3 and IMAP working again. Suggestions? -- Steve

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[Dovecot] Repeating downloads
by Paul Hanson 07 Apr '04

07 Apr '04

Sorry about the Spam with the dovecot.conf. Here is the intended message. Thanks!! Hey- Just wanna say that Im really happy with Dovecot, it has worked really well for my small operation. I do have a couple problems Id just like to bring to everyones attention for future bugfixes and if there is a solution available. Im using dovecot-0.99.10-6 with a clean fedora core 1 install. Im using primarily IMAP with OpenSSL, however a few people use POP3 (over SSL) with outlook 2002 clients. The problem is that with each send and receive another copy of all messages in their Inboxes are downloaded. I have tried closing outlook restarting it etc nothing seems to help unless I tell outlook to remove all messages from the server then outlook responds with messages that outlook was attempting to download are no longer on the server. And problem solved. Not a huge deal but others with similar setups may be experiencing the same problems. I have postfix for my MTA, every account uses Maildir. Attached is my dovecot.conf. Thanks a lot!!! -Paul

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[Dovecot] dovecot with sendmail
by electron electron 06 Apr '04

06 Apr '04

Hello, Here is an issue. I am trying to make dovecot work with sendmail If I use the default conf file (default_mail_env = ) then the inbox is the file /var/mail/user and a mail folder is created in /home/user directory where it stores all additional imap folders. The problem with this is that I cant have subfolders. If I edit dovecot.conf file and enter default_mail_env = maildir:/var/mail/%1u/%u/Maildir then I can create subfolders, but new emails are not stored in INBOX, but the stay in /var/mail/user. In order to overcome this issue I used procmail .procmailrc: ---------- { :0 Maildir/ } ---------- So now all emails are stored in Maildir format and again with the default dovecot.conf file it works fine. I was wondering if there is an alternative way to do this, without using procmail..just editing the dovecot.conf file. Thank you Regards _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

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[Dovecot] User authentication
by Pahlevanzadeh Mohsen 06 Apr '04

06 Apr '04

Hi. I installed IMP webmail. I had use MySQL authentication for IMAP. Can i use MySQL for dovecot-imap server? Please guide me.... Yours,Mohsen. ===== ---------DIGITAL SIGNATURE------------------- ///Mohsen Pahlevanzadeh//////// Network administrator & programmer My work phone is : +98216054096-7 My home phone is: +98213810146 My emails is m_pahlevanzadeh(a)yahoo.com My website is: http://webnegar.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/

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[Dovecot] dovecot not staying up
by Brian T Glenn 06 Apr '04

06 Apr '04

I found one reference to this in the archives via google, but the assistance offered there did not resolve the problem. I am getting the following in the logs: Apr 5 10:21:25 ziegchen dovecot: Dovecot starting up Apr 5 10:21:26 ziegchen dovecot: Auth process died too early - shutting down Apr 5 10:21:26 ziegchen dovecot: child 30091 (auth) returned error 127 Apr 5 10:21:26 ziegchen imap-login: fd_send(-1) failed: Broken pipe This is with SSL on or off, I have tried building the source many different ways, but it behaves the same every time. I even copied the config from a working installation and tried it with that, but to no avail. Any insight would be appreciated. -- Brian T Glenn delink.net Internet Services

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[Dovecot] dovecot not reconnecting to ldap after ldap restart
by Jared 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

I upgraded dovecot two weeks ago from 0.99.10-0.rc2 to 0.99.10.4-1woody1 (both from the woody backport packages from braincells.com) Dovecot is using LDAP on a separate machine for authentication. (through stunnel if it matters) At 4:00 am, the LDAP server stops, dumps the ldap database, and then starts back up. Because the LDAP server is stopped, anyone who tries to authenticate during the few seconds will be denied. This isn't a big deal since it's 4:00 am. However, twice in the past two weeks, it appears that if dovecot can't connect to the LDAP server, it loses the ability until dovecot is restarted. It's only happened since I upgraded, and it's only happened twice, presumably when someone was trying to check their mail at the precise moment the LDAP server is down. I get the following entry in mail.err: Mar 30 04:00:18 akbar dovecot-auth: LDAP: ldap_result() failed: Can't contact LDAP server Mar 30 04:00:19 akbar dovecot-auth: LDAP: Can't connect to server: localhost Mar 30 04:00:50 akbar last message repeated 36 times . . . The two times it has happened, ldap is responding properly (all other services we provide which use LDAP still work), stunnel on the dovecot machine is still running, and dovecot is still running, accepting IMAP and POP connections, but failing at the authentication phase. Is there some change or bug in dovecot which would make this happen? Or is there a problem with my set up? Thanks in advance for any ideas. -jared

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[Dovecot] passwd-file maintenance by users, other options
by Mike Brown 04 Apr '04

04 Apr '04

I am using Dovecot to provide IMAP and IMAP+SSL service for my users, but am still using QPopper for POP3 service, wrapped with stunnel for POP3+SSL. I am hesitant to get rid of QPopper because it supports APOP, which encrypts authentication data (both where it is stored, and when it is transmitted), and because APOP passwords can be managed by the users themselves, via the popauth tool that they can run from their shell accounts. I'd like very much to use Dovecot for POP3, but would need to have it be comparable to APOP, where authentication does not involve having user passwords going across the wire in the clear, and especially I need for users to be able to maintain their passwords themselves, preferably with their status as a current user of the system being established without my intervention; I don't want to have to manually keep things in sync with /etc/passwd. Furthermore, it needs to have no conflicts with popular email clients including Mozilla, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora, so unusual authentication mechanisms are not really an option. I've RTFM at http://www.dovecot.org/doc/auth.txt but I don't know how to establish a separate passwd file that would satisfy the requirement that users be able to maintain their passwords themselves. And PAM is a complete mystery to me. So what do you all do? Is there a tutorial somewhere that would help? Thanks, M.

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[Dovecot] Bug fix - message/rfc822 attachments
by Rick Jones 03 Apr '04

03 Apr '04

Greetings I've attached a patch that fixes a bug in Dovecot relating to rfc822 attachments. This problem shows up in Mulberry (which hammers the IMAP protocol more than most!). The problem is that FETCH BODY[n], where "n" is the number for the message/rfc822 part, returns the wrong information. It returns the message without the headers, whereas it should return the entire rfc822 attachment. FETCH BODY[n.MIME] doesn't appear to return the MIME headers for the part either. This happens because the find_part() function always steps down into the child when the type of the part is RFC822. It should only do this if the request is for a sub-part, or for HEADER. Otherwise it should stay at the current level. I have to say the IMAP protocol is a bit perverse in the way implicit nesting of rfc822 messages is handled, which is why this looks somewhat hacky. I don't see a nicer way though. The effect in Mulberry is that certain operations on rfc822 attachments don't work properly, in particular extracting the attachment into a separate message. It also affects message-digest format messages, which will completely lock up Mulberry if one is even present in a mailbox. (It may be that Dovecot itself hangs, I don't know. Once I found that the patch fixed both problems I didn't look any further :) Mulberry doesn't exhibit these problems with other IMAP servers. The attached patch is for the source code of 0.99.10.04. I've looked at the "latest" source, and there is no change in these lines of code, so I guess the bug is still there. -- Best regards Rick Jones

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[Dovecot] SSL error and PostgreSQL
by eLgino 02 Apr '04

02 Apr '04

Hello there, Anyone have a Howto for me how i can configure dovecot to work with a PostgreSQL Database? (the docs are small), i want to use it with Exim4 and i have a error with SSL "imap-login: Can't load private key file /var/dovecot/ssl/private/imapd.pem: error:0906D06C:PEM routine:PEM_read_bio:no start line" i make my cert with this command (i don't like the included script :)) openssl req -nodes -new -x509 -keyout imapd.pem -out imapd.pem -days 3650 or openssl req -nodes -new -x509 -out imapd.pem -days 3650 the pem is file is in the right directory and have "a chmod 700,777 or 600" no one of the this will work. sorry for my poor english and thanks in advance

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[Dovecot] Failed to create storage with data
by Tim Middleton 01 Apr '04

01 Apr '04

Switched from UW-IMAP to dovecot a little while ago. Worked through the namespace hell with current users. But now I've hit another problem I can't seem to figure out. Some webmail (squirrelmail) users noticed that when they tried to login they would jus get this error: ERROR: ERROR : Connection dropped by imap-server. Query: CAPABILITY I discovered in the mail logs the real error was like this: Apr 1 04:28:38 smaug imap(mcfletch): Invalid mbox file /var/mail/mcfletch: No such file or directory Apr 1 04:28:38 smaug imap(mcfletch): Failed to create storage with data: mbox:/var/mail/mcfletch And the error seems to be quite accurate. These are new logins seeing this error, which do not yet have an mbox file. So the question is, why is dovecot not able to deal with this situation? Searching google i saw the suggestoin to one preson that it was actually the ~/mail directory unable to be created, but this is not the case in my test above, as ~/mail already existed for that account. Directory permissions seem okay. /usr/mail is drwxrwxrwt (note: /var/mail is a symlink to /usr/mail on this system). The dovecot setup is fairly default. Platform is FreeBSD 4.9. Authentication is done via system password file. There's no problem accessing/modifying existing mailboxes. I put in a chron job to touch into existance any non-existing mailboxes for everyone in the passwd file periodically, which mostly eliminates the problem. But I'd still like to know why the server is having the problem, if anyone can make any suggestions. -- Tim Middleton | Cain Gang Ltd | "Are the gods not just?" "Oh no, child. x(a)veX.net | www.Vex.Net | What would become of us if they were?" (CSL)

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[Dovecot] Mulberry problem
by Rick Jones 01 Apr '04

01 Apr '04

I've been chasing a problem with Mulberry which now actually seems to be a Dovecot server bug. The problem manifests itself when manipulating embedded rfc822 messages, and the analysis comes down to the fact that a FETCH BODY[2] command returns the same thing as FETCH BODY[2.1]. Both return just the text of the embedded message, whereas FETCH BODY[2] should return everything including the headers (this is what Cyrus Daboo came up with after looking at the Mulberry log). I'm not sure exactly what version of Dovecot I'm running, it's what comes with SME Server 6.0. Has this by any chance been fixed? I have another Mulberry problem which might be related, but I'll save that for another post :) -- Regards Rick Jones

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[Dovecot] Rogue child imap processes when using Mac imap clients
by darren david 31 Mar '04

31 Mar '04

hi all- I am currently running dovecot 0.99.10p2 on OpenBSD-3.4-snapshot. It has been very stable, but I have recently noticed that I am having problems when checking IMAP-SSL mail with Mac OS X clients. There are not problems using Mozilla or Outlook on Windows, but Mac clients (Thunderbird, Mozilla, Mail.app) all exhibit the same behavior - they can check and send mail, but I end up with a single, rogue child imap process on the server that pins the cpu that i have to 'kill -9' to clear out. Is this a Mac problem or a Dovecot problem? I'm not even sure what to look for in the logs... Thanks, Darren David

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[Dovecot] New indexing code
by Timo Sirainen 31 Mar '04

31 Mar '04

Sorry about the lack of replies to questions in this list. Work on the new indexing code has taken way too long, but it's finally beginning to be get near usable state. After it's fully working, I'll start being more active here again. If you're interested (as a developer, normal users shouldn't even try playing with it yet), you can checkout "newdove" module from Dovecot CVS. Many things are still broken, but basic maildir support is almost working with the exception of expunges (which probably break badly) and custom flags (not implemented). And the maildir syncing code isn't optimized yet. Don't try it with any of your real maildirs, it might lose your mails. Some of the new great things in it: - Mailbox API which is a lot more easier to use than before, allowing a lot of things that previously were difficult to implement - Less IMAP-specific than before - Should work extremely well with shared mailboxes with tons of users I'm hoping to get a usable alpha release out of it within few weeks.

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[Dovecot] Fatal: RAND_bytes() failed
by Anders Nielsen 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

This morning dovecot died with the following messages in the errorlog. Any solution to this problem? I am using Fedora Core 1 on a SMP i686 box. imap-login: Mar 30 08:08:00 Fatal: RAND_bytes() failed: error:24064064:random number generator:SSLEAY_RAND_BYTES:PRNG not seeded dovecot: Mar 30 08:08:00 Error: Login process died too early - shutting down dovecot: Mar 30 08:08:00 Error: child 21354 (login) returned error 89 Best regards Anders Nielsen -- Anders Nielsen <anielsen(a)diku.dk>

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[Dovecot] (no subject)
by tom＠replic8.net 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

hello, suddenly, dovecot stopped working. login succeeds, then no mail is displayed to the user. i upgraded to latest nightly, no change. ==snip== Mar 30 10:17:31 commbox imap-login: Login: user [192.168.99.66] Mar 30 10:17:31 commbox imap(user): Buffer full (49) Mar 30 10:17:31 commbox dovecot: child 745 (imap) killed with signal 6 ==snap== some minutes later i tried another client - i was using php-based horde/imp webmail system first (php uses cclient2000 for imap which is based on uw-imap afaik) - using syslphed-0.99 things work fine. strange. any hints on how to debug this more? -- thanks, TOM

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[Dovecot] error starting dovecot
by Avery Day 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

I am running redhat 9.0. I have been using uw-imap for some time now and wanted to try our dovecot. After installing dovecot and trying to start it up I am getting an error ------------------- Starting IMAP daemon (dovecot): Fatal: Can't use SSL certificate /usr/share/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem: No such file or directory ------------------- Thanks for any help.

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[Dovecot] UW-IMAP -> Dovecot : patch to remove nasty "internal messages" from UW-IMAP ?
by Xavier Beaudouin 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

Hello there, We want to move from UW-IMAP to Dovecot (mbox format), works like a charm, but UW-IMAP has that bloody habbit to make a stupid message in all his mailbox files : From MAILER-DAEMON Thu Apr 19 10:30:01 2001 Date: 19 Apr 2001 10:30:01 +0200 From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON(a)mailhub2-vil.isdnet.net> Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA Message-ID: <987669001(a)mailhub2-vil.isdnet.net> X-IMAP: 0987630138 0000000001 Status: RO This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system software. If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created with the data reset to initial values. Is there any patch / trick / whatever to avoid that such "stupid" message to be not served by dovecot ? Thanks, /Xavier

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[Dovecot] IMAP error with squirrelmail - how to debug?
by Raymond Scholz 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

When moving messages with squirrelmail (or kmail), I get the following error: ERROR : Could not complete request. Query: COPY 3 "INBOX" Reason Given: Unexpected EOF According to the config I switched on rawlog: # This would write rawlogs into ~/dovecot.rawlog/ directory: mail_executable = /usr/lib/dovecot/rawlog /usr/lib/dovecot/imap rawlog.c was altered in order to have /tmp as HOME. But I see no logfiles being generated. Environment: lastest dovecot from CVS, vpopmail and local users (error with both types). Another issue: Ocassionally the auth process dies: Feb 26 21:08:49 servername dovecot: child 28641 (auth) killed with signal 11 Cheers, Ray -- Raymond Scholz - rscholz(a)zonix.de - GnuPG/PGP - http://www.zonix.de/

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[Dovecot] dovecot tls configuration
by Johannes Berg 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

Hi, I looked through the web and the list archives, but couldn't find how to set up the following: - dovecot with ssl/tls enabled - login from localhost allowed with and without tls - login from remote hosts only allowed via tls Is that possible at all? I'm using debian/unstable so its version 0.99.10.4-3. Thanks, johannes -- http://www.sipsolutions.de/ Key-ID: 9AB78CA5 Johannes Martin Berg <johannes(a)sipsolutions.de>

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[Dovecot] Process died to early
by Steven Stern 28 Mar '04

28 Mar '04

After several days of operation, POP connections fail to my server. The log message is Mar 27 15:51:46 ciscy dovecot: Login process died too early - shutting down Linux ciscy.sterndata.com 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl #1 Wed Feb 18 16:38:32 EST 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux ]# /usr/sbin/dovecot --version 0.99.10 # /etc/init.d/dovecot status dovecot (pid 6900) is running... Killing the dovecot process, deleting /var/lock/subys/dovecot, and restarting the process gets POP3 and IMAP working again. Suggestions? -- Steve

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[Dovecot] RE: Lock problem - take 2
by Alex S Moore 21 Mar '04

21 Mar '04

I deleted the index folder to fix a lock problem described on my previous post. I still cannot access the folder. Now, I have a file in the maildir folder named dovecot-uidlist.lock that must be corrupt. How do I fix this? I can remove this particular maildir folder and there is no great loss. But I want to know how to fix it, in case this problem occurs on an important folder. Thanks, Alex

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