- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] Questions
by Alejandro Martinez 19 Aug '03

19 Aug '03

Hi, I'm still figthing with passwd-file, virtual users and permissions. I have created the directory /var/spool/virtual/test and inside I've done a "maildirmake Maildir". I have a couple of questions : I use the same passwd-file for auth_userdb and as auth_passdb. 1) What program can I use to create the userdb file ? What I do now is to use the htpasswd program and then I complete by hand the rest of the fields (uid:group:GECOS:home:shell) htpasswd userdb test password: xxx again: xxx And then vi userdb test@test.com:ssasZXc00P1H6:502:102::/var/spool/virtual/test/:/bin/false <--by hand. I think that if I want to offer virtual mail with imap is very tedious to complete user by user. (If this second question does not fall in this list, then don't answer it) 2) I know that postfix delivers in Maildir format, and when the user is a virtual user, I do the next Modify the virtual file ---> test(a)test.com test.test.com Modify the aliases file--> test.test.com: /var/spool/virtual/test/Maildir postmap hash:virtual postaliases hash:aliases postfix reload but when I do a "echo testing | sendmail test(a)test.com " I receive an error Aug 18 15:32:44 slk90 postfix/pickup[12208]: 95C3717D5C: uid=0 from=<root> Aug 18 15:32:44 slk90 postfix/cleanup[12252]: 95C3717D5C: message-id=<20030818183244.95C3717D5C(a)slk90.equital.lx> Aug 18 15:32:44 slk90 postfix/qmgr[12209]: 95C3717D5C: from=<root(a)slk90.equital.lx>, size=291, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Aug 18 15:32:44 slk90 postfix/local[12254]: 95C3717D5C: to=<test.prueba.com(a)slk90.equital.lx>, orig_to=<test(a)prueba.com>, relay=local, delay=0, status=bounced (cannot append message to destination file /var/spool/virtual/test/Maildir: cannot open file: Permission denied) I'm confused about permissions. I set the /var/spool/virtual to dovecot.postfix and the permissions are drwxrwx--- Thanks a lot. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com) Version: 6.0.509 / Virus Database: 306 - Release Date: 12/08/2003

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[Dovecot] CVS note
by Timo Sirainen 18 Aug '03

18 Aug '03

Another large update for header caching which breaks your old indexes. I think it's working pretty nicely now. Only some smaller tweaking left to do with caching in general.

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[Dovecot] more transitional joys
by Eric S. Johansson 17 Aug '03

17 Aug '03

well, now that I have moved to dovecot, I'm not getting any spam... in fact, I'm not getting e-mail at all. default_mail_env =mbox:~/IMap2/:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u when I first tried to access my inbox, I was told I had permission problems: Aug 14 17:47:22 harvee imap(esj): open(/var/spool/mail/esj.lock) failed: Permission denied Aug 14 17:47:22 harvee imap(esj): file_lock_dotlock() failed with mbox file /var/spool/mail/esj: Permission denied so I changed permissions on /var/spool/mail to 777 as a temporary work around. no luck. It tells me that I have no e-mail in my inbox... fat chance [root@harvee mail]# ls -l /var/spool/mail/esj -rw------- 1 esj mail 167772 Aug 14 18:05 /var/spool/mail/esj what simply obvious thing I am I missing now? ---eric

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[Dovecot] 0.9.10 and Cygwin
by Tim H. 17 Aug '03

17 Aug '03

Has anybody succeeded in compiling 0.9.10 with Cygwin? I'm getting the following error:- gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I../.. -g -O2 -Wall -W -Wmissing-prototypes -Wmissing-declarations -Wpointer-arith -Wchar-subscripts -Wformat=2 -Wbad-function-cast -c istream-file.c istream-file.c:57: conflicting types for `_close' /usr/include/sys/unistd.h:148: previous declaration of `_close' istream-file.c:129: conflicting types for `_read' /usr/include/sys/unistd.h:153: previous declaration of `_read' make: *** [istream-file.o] Error 1 Thanks Tim

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[Dovecot] login w/ IMAP & LDAP
by Bob Hall 16 Aug '03

16 Aug '03

I'm getting imap-login: Internal login failure: bob whenever I try to check mail. I'm new to mail server setup, new to IMAP, and I don't know a heck of a lot about authentication schemes. I've set up Dovecot as an IMAP server on FreeBSD 4.8. I've got OpenLDAP running on the same system. Users will access mail via Eudora on Windows and Macs, so that's how I'm testing. If I try to test Dovecot using IMAP commands via telnet, Dovecot tells me LOGIN BAD Error in IMAP command received by server. I also can't telnet via localhost; I have to specify the host name, so I'm connecting via the host's external interface. I have no problem connecting to localhost on ports not used by Dovecot. So I have two questions: 1) How do I correct my configuration to make login successful? 2) How can I test Dovecot without using an MUA? If I have to use an MUA, I can't distinguish between errors in the MUA and errors in the IMAP server. Thanks for any help with these two. Configuration follows. Eudora: Server configuration: IMAP IMAP Mailbox Location Prefix: /var/mail/bob/Mail Authentication Style: passwords dovecot.conf ---------------- protocols = imap imaps imap_listen = *:143 login_user = dovecot default_mail_env = mbox:/var/mail/%u/Mail auth_userdb = ldap /usr/local/etc/dovecot-ldap.conf auth_passdb = ldap /usr/local/etc/dovecot-ldap.conf auth_user = dovecot dovecot-ldap.conf ------------------- hosts = localhost dn = cn=dovecot,dc=domain,dc=tld dnpass = ********** ldap_version = 3 base = ou=accounts,dc=domain,dc=tld deref = never scope = subtree user_attrs = uid user_filter = (&(objectClass=inetOrgPerson)(uid=%u)) pass_attrs = uid,userPassword pass_filter = (&(objectClass=inetOrgPerson)(uid=%u)) default_pass_scheme = PLAIN slapd.conf ----------------- password-hash {CLEARTEXT} If I change this last to CRYPT (comment out the dovecot-ldap default_pass_scheme and change the slapd.conf password-hash to {CRYPT} and re-enter the password into LDAP), I get the same error. I have no problem accessing the LDAP data from the command line. If I comment out the dovecot-ldap.conf user_filter and pass_filter, I get dovecot-auth: ldap(bob): unknown user I interpret as meaning that the user_filter and pass_filter are necessary. Bob Hall

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[Dovecot] Startup Problem
by Tobias Sasse 15 Aug '03

15 Aug '03

Hello, i don't like asking stupid questions in mailinglist, 'cause i guess you got something better to do than answer it. But well this is an exception, because i didn't find anything on google. Here comes my problem: I'm using a NetBSD 1.6.0 System with the latest dovecot build. i want to start dovecot imapd by: root@balin:[/etc]$ ./rc.d/dovecot start Starting dovecot. Fatal: Error in configuration file /usr/pkg/etc/dovecot.conf line 88: Missing value This is my error ;) This is the line 88 in my conf file. maildir:/home/%u/mail the maildir was created by 'makemaildir mail' and exists: root@balin:[/home/tobi]$ ls -all total 18 drwxr-xr-x 4 tobi users 512 Aug 15 09:11 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 512 Aug 13 01:18 .. drwx------ 5 tobi users 512 Aug 14 12:47 mail there it is. in default option of the maildir line dovecot starts without problems but i really want to have my mails in /home/%u/mail and not in /var/mail/%1u/%u/mail So could somebody please put some light on it? Thank you, Tobi

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[Dovecot] joys of transition.
by Eric S. Johansson 15 Aug '03

15 Aug '03

Red Hat 8.0 stock dovecot 99.10 for a variety of reasons, I decided to cut over to dovecot this morning. I extracted all of my mailboxes from mbx purgatory back to mbox purgatory, set up dovecot and proceed to get authentication failures. (am using simple password based authentication either direct or through pam) I turned authentication verbosity on and got: Aug 14 11:51:38 harvee dovecot: Dovecot starting up Aug 14 11:51:46 harvee dovecot-auth: PAM: pam_authenticate(esj) failed: Authentication failure Aug 14 11:51:49 harvee dovecot-auth: PAM: pam_authenticate(esj) failed: Authentication failure Aug 14 11:51:52 harvee imap-login: Aborted login [192.168.0.10] not very informative. I already know that I can't login. So I fire up ethereal and capture the following transaction: * OK dovecot ready. 1 authenticate login 1 NO Unsupported authentication mechanism. 2 login "esj" "no peeking" 2 NO Authentication failed. 3 authenticate login 3 NO Unsupported authentication mechanism. 4 login "esj" "no peeking" 4 NO Authentication failed. 5 logout * BYE Logging out 5 OK Logout completed. hmm no unsupported authentication mechanism. So that means all authentication methods works right? ;-) looking a little further into the configuration, I see instructions to change auth_methods to add plain in front of digest-md5 (or is it digest_md5, both forms are present in the configuration file). No luck. Doing so gives me the following error message: Fatal: Error in configuration file /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf line 430: Unknown setting: methods so, I'm not sure what to look for. It's probably something simple but googling didn't reveal anything pertinent although it turned up something amusing[1]and dovecot does apply. Suggestions or clues would be welcome. FYI, you probably could use a little bit more detail in the install instructions. For example instructing user to create a dovecot user and group name would be useful as would be a startup/shutdown script for init.d. I also find the SSL configuration lacking. On the other hand, I have enough scar tissue from certificates and mini-CA setups to hate them till the end of time. If I get them working better, I'll document and send it to the list. ---eric [1]http://www.oblomovka.com/eldritch/iag/ob1-5.htm

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[Dovecot] error in config file?
by Robert S. Jagger 15 Aug '03

15 Aug '03

When I start dovecot I am getting an error about the ocnfig file. watson:~# /etc/init.d/dovecot start Starting mail server: dovecotFatal: Error in configuration file /etc/dovecot.conf line 185: Missing value So I look int /etc/dovecot.conf and line 185 is mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u/ Which seems like valid syntax according to the docs. I am using dovecot 0.99.10-2

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[Dovecot] Mozilla
by Stefan Sels 14 Aug '03

14 Aug '03

Hi, I hope this problem is not answered before. Mozilla is making trouble with searching and subscribing folders. Do I have to change the "namespace" ? If I start a search (other than just in To & CC or subject) mozilla complains about a closed connection. A fresh mozilla installation just lists no folder beside "Inbox". Regards, Stefan Sels

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[Dovecot] Hardlinks in copy
by Andreas Aardal Hanssen 12 Aug '03

12 Aug '03

Hi, Dovecotters. In the Maildir code, dovecot-0.99.10/src/lib-storage/index/maildir/maildir-copy.c, I see that hardlinks are used. It seems that (line 185) if MAILDIR_COPY_WITH_HARDLINKS is exported, then copying is attempted by using link. Having problems reading the source / flow of control, I resort to this list. When a file is linked, the mtime is naturally kept on the destination. This gives the destination message the same internaldate as the original. The destination mailbox would then be likely to get an arrival with an earlier internaldate than its newest message. The IMAP protocol says to bump UIDVALIDITY when this happens. Does Dovecot always bump UIDVALIDITY when messages are copied, or is not the mtime used for internaldate? Best regards, Andreas -- Andreas Aardal Hanssen

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[Dovecot] 0.99.10-test5
by Timo Sirainen 12 Aug '03

12 Aug '03

Again at http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/test/ if someone wants to test it. - new index file code should work now - mbox support is completely broken - caching isn't very smart yet. it always caches only what client requested at the time - header caching might have some problems actually now that I think of it.. I was anyway going to change a bit how it worked.

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[Dovecot] CVS/test version config/build failures on FreeBSD
by Mike Brown 11 Aug '03

11 Aug '03

While diagnosing a problem I was having with IMAP and SSL (which I ended up fixing by simply upgrading from 0.99.9.1 to 0.99.10, and possibly affected by upgrading openssl libs from 0.9.7a to 0.9.7.b), I attempted to try the CVS version of Dovecot. When using the CVS version, apparently I have to first generate 'configure' using autogen.sh (?). This was the result of that, on FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE (2003-08-06): # ./autogen.sh automake: configure.in: installing `./install-sh' automake: configure.in: installing `./mkinstalldirs' automake: configure.in: installing `./missing' configure.in: 3: required file `./config.h.in' not found automake: configure.in: installing `./depcomp' configure.in:3: warning: do not use m4_patsubst: use patsubst or m4_bpatsubst configure.in:13: warning: AC_ARG_PROGRAM invoked multiple times configure.in:1126: warning: do not use m4_regexp: use regexp or m4_bregexp autoheader: `config.h.in' is created And then... # ./configure checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes checking for gawk... no checking for mawk... no checking for nawk... nawk checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... yes checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no checking for style of include used by make... GNU checking for gcc... gcc checking for C compiler default output... a.out checking whether the C compiler works... yes checking whether we are cross compiling... no checking for suffix of executables... checking for suffix of object files... o checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes checking dependency style of gcc... gcc checking for strerror in -lcposix... no checking for gcc... (cached) gcc checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... (cached) yes checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes checking dependency style of gcc... (cached) gcc checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E checking for ANSI C header files... yes checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed checking for inline... inline checking build system type... i386-unknown-freebsdelf4.8 checking host system type... i386-unknown-freebsdelf4.8 checking for ranlib... ranlib checking for ld used by GCC... /usr/libexec/elf/ld checking if the linker (/usr/libexec/elf/ld) is GNU ld... yes checking for BSD-compatible nm... /usr/bin/nm -B checking whether ln -s works... yes loading cache /dev/null within ltconfig ./ltconfig: .: /dev/null: not a regular file ltconfig: you must specify a host type if you use `--no-verify' Try `ltconfig --help' for more information. configure: error: libtool configure failed I also attempted to use 0.99.11-test4 from http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/test/, but this failed to build: [...] Making all in maildir gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I../../../.. -I../../../../src/lib -I../../../../src/lib-mail -I../../../../src/lib-imap -I../../../../src/lib-index -I../../../../src/lib-index/maildir -I../../../../src/lib-storage -I../../../../src/lib-storage/index -I/usr/local/include -g -O2 -Wall -W -Wmissing-prototypes -Wmissing-declarations -Wpointer-arith -Wchar-subscripts -Wformat=2 -Wbad-function-cast -c maildir-copy.c make: don't know how to make ../../../../src/lib-storage/index/index-expunge.h. Stop *** Error code 1 Stop in /usr/local/src/dovecot/dovecot-0.99.11-test4/src/lib-storage/index. Just thought you'd like to know :) -Mike

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[Dovecot] Some benchmarking
by Timo Sirainen 11 Aug '03

11 Aug '03

So I finally got the new mail caching code fully working in normal conditions. Index rebuilding and some error correction still needs a bit work. mbox is also still broken. Anyway, I was mostly interested how fast Dovecot now works with my 367000 LKML mails, but thought I'd have to get something to compare the results against, so here's Dovecot vs. Courier. Results against older Dovecot would have been pretty boring, the older Dovecot could never perform threading without opening all the files and reading References-headers from them. Sorting would could have been done from cache if IMAP ENVELOPEs were cached, I'd estimate maybe 2-3x larger user CPU usage with it and a _lot_ larger cache file since it would have stored from, to, etc. fields in it. Results against Cyrus would be interesting. I'll probably do those sometimes later too.. Last I checked, Cyrus was very slow at inserting the mails into it's database, it took .. was it 1-3 hours to insert all those mails, while a simple copying took maybe 20 mins. Anyway, Cyrus's caching is pretty dummy as well so I'd expect Dovecot to be many times faster in threading and likely somewhat faster in sorting.

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[Dovecot] Direct RADIUS support, not via PAM
by Jethro R Binks 08 Aug '03

08 Aug '03

Hi, I'm currently testing dovecot to authenticate user passwords against a radius server, via pam_radius_auth, and that seems to work fine. However, I am running other software (Exim MTA) that also authenticates via radius, using the radiusclient library from: http://www.mcs.de/~lf/radius/ Is there any chance that this library could be used by Dovecot as a further authentication option, and save me having two separate radius configurations for two different (but related) pieces of software, and the need to install pam_radius_auth, which I don't otherwise use? Jethro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jethro R Binks Computing Officer, IT Services University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

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[Dovecot] Slow bulk deleting
by Leslie Viljoen 07 Aug '03

07 Aug '03

Hi! I am finding Dovecot very slow to delete large numbers of messages. IS this a known problem? Leslie

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[Dovecot] compile with dietlibc
by Jens Gutzeit 07 Aug '03

07 Aug '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi all, I'm used to test the software which I use with dietlibc, just to see if it could run without the bloat of glibc. While compiling dovecot 0.99.10 I got these errors: In file included from lib.h:20, from alarm-hup.c:26: compat.h:30: conflicting types for `uint_fast32_t' /opt/diet/include/stdint.h:25: previous declaration of `uint_fast32_t' I've solved this in a dirty way, but is this something which could be fixed in the future? Thanks in advance, Jens Gutzeit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/L/etLPHiyaqJLscRAuNGAJ9jlOQzx86T+NS9h7FfjoDi86R4ygCgs6gb 1XyNB93ybwiG4gFatz797qo= =WZod -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[Dovecot] thinking seriously about converting
by Eric S. Johansson 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

to dovecot from UW imap. I think I will go all the way to maildir while I'm at it. I was having performance problems with mbox format files and converted to mbx but it's not really yielding a huge performance gain. Deletes and moves are still rather slow at times. my mailboxes are typically 2000 to 5000 messages. I've scanned the mailing lists a bit and picked up some hints on the conversion. Any bits of advice before I convert? Since it's only my own account I'm converting (my wife likes mutt), I'm torn between two different ways of converting the mailboxes. First is to convert all of the mbx format mailboxes back to mbox. Then convert from mbox to maildir. Second is running both imap server simultaneously (obviously one on a different port number) and running some form of a tool to read from one imap server and write to the other. any better ideas? many thanks ---eric

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[Dovecot] corrupt mbox, mailboxes not found, and message read status
by Jared 04 Aug '03

04 Aug '03

I'm running dovecot 0.99.10-0.rc2 deb packages for Debian Woody from braincells.com. My old environment was a server running UW-IMAP for IMAP and POP services. We are still using mbox for all mailboxes. I use IMP for web based access. Forgive me if these issues have already been discussed or fixed in cvs. Any additional pointers to this info. would be appreciated. I have noticed a few issues. ---- I've seen a whole slew of entries like the following: pop3(username): Error indexing mbox file /home/username/mail/inbox: LF not found where expected According to this mailing list post from June 16, 2003: http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/list/dovecot/2003-June/001668.html it may be because of adjacent From mail headers in a message. I've had one user that this was not the case. They said they were deleting lots of messages in IMP and when he went back to his inbox, it was empty. When I looked at the mbox file, a message had been truncated. When I deleted the imap index and removed that truncated message, the mailbox became visible again. Has the adjacent From issue been fixed? Is there a way to find out more specifically what part of the mbox file dovecot is unhappy about? ie. a line number. ---- Inside IMP several users have set up a filter to send messages marked as spam by SpamAssassin into a spam folder. When they log-in or click the filter icon, the filter runs. However, now when the the filter runs, it reports: "Problem with filter rule 1: folder does not exist: mail/spam". However, the spam folder is still there, and when I open that folder in IMP, it opens just fine. I've already changed IMP's folder prefix from 'mail/' to ''. I've also tried deleting the imap index. The message still shows up and the filter fails to run. ---- With the old set-up, when I check mail with a pop3 client, the UW pop server modifies the Status and/or X-Keywords headers for the message. When the mailbox is viewed with an IMAP client such as IMP, messages that have already been downloaded via pop are marked as read. This doesn't seem to happen with dovecot. I found a Oct 19 2003 thread ( http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/list/dovecot/2002-October/000774.html ) on the mailing list where Timo said he was intending to use the X-Keywords trick. Did this ever get implemented? ---- Thanks, -jared

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[Dovecot] why wont /usr/pkg/libexec/dovecot/imap see my Maildir
by Charlie Allom 04 Aug '03

04 Aug '03

When I invoke /usr/pkg/libexec/dovecot/imap from the command loine on the mail host, it logs me in, but won't see my emails: 13:22 yeled@lazy:~$ /usr/pkg/libexec/dovecot/imap * PREAUTH [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND * UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN LISTEXT LIST-SUBSCRIBED] Logged in * as yeled 0 select inbox * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft) * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)] * Flags permitted. * 0 EXISTS * 0 RECENT * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1059959635] UIDs valid * OK [UIDNEXT 1] Predicted next UID 0 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed. I know I have many emails in there, and I can see them when I login via telnet localhost 443. Any tips? would be nice to use fetchmail with ssh here. C. -- charlie(a)rubberduck.com - Melbourne, Australia http://rubberduck.com/~yeled/ PGP: 0x14AA7941 || finger yeled(a)lazy.spodder.com

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[Dovecot] Confusion
by Alejandro Martinez 02 Aug '03

02 Aug '03

Hi, I have a great confusion about mbox, maildir. I use a passwd-file to authenticate users, because I want to use non local users. I have a test user in that file that is this: test:VGRAafc3NHJwI:502:100:Usuario Virtual:/var/spool/mail/virtual/test:/no/shell I create inside /var/spool/mail/virtual/test a folder Maildir and inside Maildir /var/spool/mail/virtual/test/Maildir/cur/ /var/spool/mail/virtual/test/Maildir/new/ /var/spool/mail/virtual/test/Maildir/tmp/ I get an error when I login to the server admin@slk90 /$ telnet localhost 143 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost.localdomain. Escape character is '^]'. * OK dovecot ready. . login test test . OK Logged in. Connection closed by foreign host. The /var/spool/mail/error is this "Aug 2 08:46:46 slk90 imap(test): Failed to create storage with data: /var/spool/mail/virtual/test/Maildir" I've tried setting default_mail_env = maildir:~/Maildir and mbox:~/Maildir, but nothing work. Any help ? Regards. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com) Version: 6.0.506 / Virus Database: 303 - Release Date: 01/08/2003

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RE: [Dovecot] corrupt mbox, mailboxes not found, and message rea d status
by Maikel Verheijen 31 Jul '03

31 Jul '03

[SNIP] > http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/list/dovecot/2002> -October/000774.html ) > > on the mailing list where Timo said he was intending to use the > > X-Keywords trick. Did this ever get implemented? > > X-Keywords have been used for a long time now. It's possible > to set \Seen flag for messages downloaded with POP3, but I > don't know if it's worth the trouble. Who uses POP3 and IMAP > mixed anyway? > A lot of our customers, since we only supported pop3 in the past, and our new webmail uses imap. :) And a lot of people don't click on "This is an imap server" when creating their account in for instance outlook-express. Kind regards, Maikel Verheijen.

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[Dovecot] New index file code
by Timo Sirainen 31 Jul '03

31 Jul '03

I just had to write this even while it's not just yet in CVS, but it's only a few fixes away from being committed.. My year long dream has finally came true :) [Summary: Next release will have REALLY kickass indexes] Previously the biggest problem with caching message data in indexes was that we had to do it while syncing the mailbox, before client even saw those messages. This caused index rebuilds to be very slow since it had to go through all mails and cache all of them, even if client never would access them. Alternative was to not cache anything at all, but that wasn't really good idea either. Now Dovecot caches the data when client is actually requesting it. That way it will never do any extra work for caching something that client isn't currently interested in. There's still the anticipatory caching for data that client is likely to be interested in later, but that is done only when it doesn't cause extra disk I/O. The reason why it took this long was because it was previously too difficult with read/write locking that indexes required. I couldn't have relied on it working since changing from read lock -> write lock could deadlock and dropping the lock in the middle would have caused even more problems. So, what I did was to rewrite the cache file handling completely: - It doesn't require any locking to read from it. - It will be NFS-safe without being too costly. - The file format itself is now architecture-independent. - Uses less space than before - OpenBSD support is now worse than before, even worse than NFS-support. They should get that unified cache done. Cached data is also selected better: - Specifically requested message headers are cached (FETCH, SEARCH, SORT, THREAD, etc.) - IMAP ENVELOPE isn't treated in any special way anymore. It's treated just as if you had requested HEADER.FIELDS (Date Subject From ...etc.). - Maildir filenames aren't constantly updated in the cache file anymore. This takes more memory now, but should reduce disk I/O. There's a few more tweaks that I'll probably add later: - Maildir: When compressing cache file we update mail's filename to current one so if message's flags aren't changed often, it won't use any extra memory either. - A normal text/plain message doesn't need to have it's IMAP BODYSTRUCTURE cached. It only needs a single bit set in flags. Should reduce used space quite a lot. - Message with only one body part doesn't need to have it's body structure stored at all since it's mostly just useful for fetching body parts. Plus the body structure could be generated if message sizes were known. All this work was only for index cache file (ex. .data file). There's still the main .imap.index file and modify log files. Modify log should be easy to make NFS-safe - I'm currently using some stupid file locking to figure out when the file is safe to overwrite, but I should have simply replaced the old file with rename(). That will solve some other problems as well as make the code simpler. It should be possible to be made read-lockless as well. The main index file is more problematic though. It contains a lot of changing fields in the header, such as number of messages, number of seen messages, etc. I can't think of any way to make it safe to read these fields without locks (my previous ideas didn't actually work). Lockless reads are pretty much a must for scalable NFS-safety. I think it could be done by simply removing all the constantly changing headers. If you want to know how many seen messages there are, just read all the records in the file and count them. Expunging would be done by rewriting the file and rename()ing it over the old file. Appending new messages is a bit tricky to do safely, but I think I know how to do that too.. read/write locks allow the changing headers, but there's locking contention problems with shared mailboxes.. I think I'll make it optional how to do this. Oh, and I also thought how indexes would work with shared mailboxes. You could use one shared cache file, but each user would have their own main index and modify log. That would allow storing per-user flags in the index file and also expunge (hide) messages by removing them from user's index.

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[Dovecot] Is dovecot NFS safe?
by Adam Shand 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

I'm migrating our mailserver from cyrus 2.0 to Postfix and Dovecot. We're using maildirs delivered to /var/maildir, which is mounted via NFS from a Netapp. My understanding was that maildir was completely happy in an NFS environment but I've seen a couple messages here recently which mention the dovecot index files not being NFS safe. Are their any caveats or gotcha's that I need to be aware of? Thanks, Adam.

4 5

[Dovecot] Namespaces
by Timo Sirainen 27 Jul '03

27 Jul '03

0.99.11-test4 release: http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/test/ Finally namespaces somewhat working. Example: namespace private { separator = / prefix = INBOX/ location = maildir:~/Maildir } namespace private { separator = / prefix = #mbox/ location = mbox:~/mail } Problems: - Mailbox listing lists only the first namespace unless you clearly ask mailboxes under some namespace. Not really a problem, but related to: - There should be only one common subscriptions file for all namespaces. This needs some thinking how to do it well. - Having multiple different mailbox formats in one namespace still isn't possible. Needs some more thinking as well.

1 0

[Dovecot] API changes and plugins
by Timo Sirainen 26 Jul '03

26 Jul '03

There's been quite a lot of changes in CVS lately, mostly related to API changes but also some index file changes. They've both had very little testing, so there's probably a few bugs left. Especially mbox users should be careful. pop3 might also be deleting wrong messages.. Anyway. The new mail storage API should allow plugins to hook into pretty much any operation they want to. It's not exactly pretty with C syntax, but I think conceptually it's nice object oriented design :) There's example (non-working) quota plugin at: http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/patches/quota.c I also built 0.99.11-test3 from current CVS: http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/test/

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[Dovecot] Dovecot on Mac OS X?
by jennyw 25 Jul '03

25 Jul '03

Just wondering if anyone has successfully gotten Dovecot to run on Mac OS X? If so, I'd love to hear what your experience has been! Thanks! Jen

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FW: [Dovecot] Is dovecot NFS safe?
by Maikel Verheijen 25 Jul '03

25 Jul '03

This was ment for the list :) Sorry Stuart, for the double email... Regards, Maikel. > -----Original Message----- > From: Maikel Verheijen > Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 3:40 PM > To: 'Stuart Henderson' > Subject: RE: [Dovecot] Is dovecot NFS safe? > > > Hi, > > Be aware that also your .subscriptions file and .customflags > are not nfs safe (yet) in dovecot-0.99.10. > > I know Timo is working on that though :) > > Kind regards, > > Maikel Verheijen. > > Ps: I have a "crude" patch to make .subscriptions and > .customflags nfs aware (I can not guarentee it is nfs safe ;-). > My own setup runs on nfs with the indexes in memory. > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Stuart Henderson [mailto:stu@spacehopper.org] > > Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 2:13 PM > > To: Adam Shand; dovecot(a)procontrol.fi > > Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Is dovecot NFS safe? > > > > > > > I'm migrating our mailserver from cyrus 2.0 to Postfix > and Dovecot. > > > > > > We're using maildirs delivered to /var/maildir, which is > > mounted via > > > NFS from a Netapp. My understanding was that maildir was > > completely > > > happy in an NFS environment but I've seen a couple messages here > > > recently which mention the dovecot index files not being NFS safe. > > > > > > Are their any caveats or gotcha's that I need to be aware of? > > > > You'll probably want to keep them in memory or on local disk. See > > <http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/doc/nfs.txt> for more information - > > default_mail_env needs either ":INDEX=/local/path/to/indexes/%u" or > > ":INDEX=MEMORY", all machines accessing the mailstore should have > > sync'd clocks, and all imap servers need separate hostnames. > > > > --Stu > > >

1 0

[Dovecot] phpgroupware's imap client with dovecot
by Farkas Levente 24 Jul '03

24 Jul '03

hi, we try to use http://www.phpgroupware.org/ imap client with dovecot, but it doesn't working. is there any way to get it working with dovecot? there are a few possibbilities for imap type: courier or cyrus WUash WU-maildir but none of them seems to be working, although pop3 is working. any tip? can I send any log? thanks in advance. -- Levente "Si vis pacem para bellum!"

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Re: [Dovecot] Dovecot, Squirrelmail and KMail
by Rob Thyssen 24 Jul '03

24 Jul '03

On Thursday 24 Jul 2003 11:36 am, Timo Sirainen wrote: > And it shows in kmail? It does display correctly in kmail... > You'll probably just have to setup squirrelmail not to use the > INBOX-prefix: > 1. Default Folder Prefix : > 12. Default Sub. of INBOX : false I thot that was going to sort it, alas it doesn't. Has it got something to do with the fact that kmail puts the contents of subfolders into a hidden directory in ~/Mail ? In kmail I have folders like: Forums, Newsletters, etc... These have subfolders, but in the file system it looks like: /home/rob/Mail/.Forums.directory/DCLUG/ instead of the expected: /home/rob/Mail/Forums/DCLUG/ Thanks for your help! /rob

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[Dovecot] Dovecot, Squirrelmail and KMail
by Rob Thyssen 24 Jul '03

24 Jul '03

I just installed Dovecot and squirrelmail to read my email when I'm away from home. I subscribed to all the folders in my mail directory but I can't actually see any email. Is this a dovecot issue or a squirrelmail issue? I'm running KMail from KDE 3.1.2 and use Debian (Testing) on a Digital Alpha and installed both squirrelmail and dovecot using apt-get. I had to set 'default_mail_env = maildir:~/Mail' To get it to see the parent folders but I'm stuck there. Any advice appreciated. /rob

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[Dovecot] FYI: dovecot is included in redhat beta
by Farkas Levente 24 Jul '03

24 Jul '03

hi, just note that in the current redhat beta they include dovecot 0.99.10:-) -- Levente "Si vis pacem para bellum!"

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[Dovecot] Re: Stripping of domain name
by Timo Sirainen 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

On Wed, 2003-07-23 at 20:10, SIMflex Internet Support wrote: > Dear sir, > > Can you please tell me how to make dovecot stipoff or ingore a > @domain.com in a username? Currently, we are only using one domain > (more may be needed in the future), and some of our clients have > incorrectly configured mail clients with the @domain.com in the user > name. We migrated from qpopper and teapop to use Maildirs (we are > building a LVS cluster) and could not use mboxes anymore. In short, > what I need is Well .. What password/user databases do you use? One way is to set default_realm and set the @domain for all users in passdb/userdb. Another way is to patch the code. Below is a patch for plaintext authentication. Or maybe I should make option that if given realm is default_realm, it would look up the user without the realm. I'm not sure if it's worth doing though. BTW. Your mail to dovecot-list got stuck at spamassassin. I raised the spam points a bit and lowered HTML mail's points a bit. Better would be if I could update SA's whitelist automatically when people subscribe. But I'm not really sure how to do that with mailman. RCS file: /home/cvs/dovecot/src/auth/mech-plain.c,v retrieving revision 1.13 diff -u -r1.13 mech-plain.c --- mech-plain.c 8 May 2003 03:18:43 -0000 1.13 +++ mech-plain.c 23 Jul 2003 19:31:13 -0000 @@ -48,14 +48,8 @@ mech_auth_finish(auth_request, NULL, 0, FALSE); } else { /* split and save user/realm */ - if (strchr(authenid, '@') == NULL && default_realm != NULL) { - auth_request->user = p_strconcat(auth_request->pool, - authenid, "@", - default_realm, NULL); - } else { - auth_request->user = p_strdup(auth_request->pool, - authenid); - } + auth_request->user = p_strdup(auth_request->pool, + t_strcut(authenid, '@')); if (!mech_is_valid_username(auth_request->user)) { /* invalid username */

1 0

RE: [Dovecot] Hooks on folder operations
by Maikel Verheijen 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

Hi Grahame, > Hi all, > > I'm interested in implementing an anti-spam system using > bayesian filtering. I had the idea of modifying and IMAP > server to assist in training the spam filter. Why do you want to hook it up into your imap server? I think it would be better to prevent emails to enter the mailbox with the MTA rather than removing it when the user is reading his email using imap. Why? Because the spam that is in the mailbox might push the user over his quota limit, and thus preventing legitimate emails to be delivered. > I was thinking of running a program whenever a message in > moved to the folder "Spam" or to a "Safe" folder. This could > be easily added to the server as a generic feature, with hook > programs for: > * new message in a folder (either new, or moved into the folder) > * message in folder is modified > * message in folder is removed > and so on. If the support was generic enough there could be > many uses for it. Security of the external program needs to > be considered but doesn't really affect the IMAP server itself. With the new API code that Timo is making now, I guess this would be possible. (After all: if quota's are updated, something was written to the mailbox, or deleted of course!) > Anyway, if I were to write a patch to add support for running > an external program in these cases, would it be included? Any > feedback would be appreciated, if I'm going to do this I > might as well do it in a way that can be integrated back into > the main tree! You can always build a plugin, and plugins can be loaded whenever an administrator wants them to load. I don't know if Timo wants to include all plugins that are / will be written for dovecot, but I guess there might be a plugins part, where people can "post" their plugins so other people can benefit from them :) > Cheers > Grahame Kind regards, Maikel Verheijen

4 4

[Dovecot] Courier's IMAP custom flags implementation
by Timo Sirainen 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

Just thought to mention: http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/tmp/README.imapkeywords.html I'm not sure what to think of it. Good thing in it is that it doesn't limit the number of flags. Bad thing is that I think it's way too slow. Compared to Dovecot's implementation where I "steal" maildir flags a..z and treat them in the normal maildir way. Bad thing is obviously that it's limited to 26 different flags. And I really should fix that customflags file soon to be NFS-safe / read-lockless. It's just a bit problematic how to handle removing unused flags when you've hit the 26 limit and try to add new ones.

2 1

[Dovecot] Hooks on folder operations
by Grahame Bowland 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

Hi all, I'm interested in implementing an anti-spam system using bayesian filtering. I had the idea of modifying and IMAP server to assist in training the spam filter. I was thinking of running a program whenever a message in moved to the folder "Spam" or to a "Safe" folder. This could be easily added to the server as a generic feature, with hook programs for: * new message in a folder (either new, or moved into the folder) * message in folder is modified * message in folder is removed and so on. If the support was generic enough there could be many uses for it. Security of the external program needs to be considered but doesn't really affect the IMAP server itself. Anyway, if I were to write a patch to add support for running an external program in these cases, would it be included? Any feedback would be appreciated, if I'm going to do this I might as well do it in a way that can be integrated back into the main tree! Cheers Grahame -- Grahame Bowland Email: grahame(a)ucs.uwa.edu.au University Communications Services Phone: +61 8 9380 1175 The University of Western Australia Fax: +61 8 9380 1109 CRICOS: 00126G

1 0

[Dovecot] Imap 2 imap copy tool?
by Maikel Verheijen 23 Jul '03

23 Jul '03

Hi List! At the moment, our company is preparing to migrate from MS-Exchange to a dovecot mail platform. Since there is no way to access the emails on the file-store other than using webmail, pop or imap, I wanted to do this by using an imap-to-imap copy tool. I have found one that does the job (but POORLY), named migrate (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/cyrus-utils/) Does anyone know some other tool(s) for me I could have a look at? My requirements for such software are: - it should use a username;password list to do the migration (20k+ users) - it should be able to do imap to imap copy, or imap to maildir with a flexible path - it should copy all the folders too, except the "Public Folders" from exchange. - it has to be able to "ignore" unknown flags from the exchange imap server (\Recent). What I would love the software to have (and what imapmigrate lacks): - Folder and message syncing (to be able to keep the mailbox in sync) - detailed errors if something goes wrong, not too much fuss over accounts that DO get copied cleanly - fast tool? :) Thank you for your time! Kind regards, Maikel Verheijen.

1 0

[Dovecot] hierarchy_sep
by molter＠tin.it 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

Hi Timo, I would like to add another naming scheme to dovecot to recognize maildir folders: As of today: ~/Maildir/.foo ~/Maildir/.foo.bar I would like to add: ~/Maildir/foo ~/Maildir/foo/bar I had a quick look at the code (very clean, I am impressed!) and I saw struct mail_storage, with field hierarchy_sep. I think I cannot just set hierarchy_sep to '/', because /foo would start from the root of the filesystem instead of being relative to ~/Maildir. Do you have any suggestions on the cleaner way of doing it? Or maybe do you think it is wrong to depart from '.' for some reason? thanks Marco

2 1

RE: [Dovecot] Loadable module
by Maikel Verheijen 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

Hi Timo, [snipped possible scenario's] > OK. 3) is the best idea :) But it requires a few changes to > make it work. I wouldn't expect it to work out of the box :) But if I read your suggestions right, you propose a "fixed" change in the maildir functions that call the quota update functions if necessary. So perhaps we should make a quota_enabled = yes|no flag int the config file, and use that? I would still be trying to make the quota update functions for you, and try to put them in. > Actually, I think this is exactly how I want quota and ACLs > to be implemented. No extra interface changes for either one of them. > > For quota, you'd want to do something like: > > expunge(): nothing special, just update the quota file after expunges Expunge should recalculate the whole mailfolder? > save_next(): Check data istream's size and if it's over quota, fail. Ok. So this one can be "easy". Just check if mailsize + current usage < max_quota. :) > copy(): this is somewhat problematic, if there wasn't the > maildir hardlinks you wouldn't have to touch it at all.. A copy can duplicate a message in the same store, but do hardlinks work on nfs? If not, we should add the message to the quota list. And maybe we should just add size of the email anyway, it won't be that much of a loss to the user, and it would save us a lot of checking. :) And how about a user that has no quota file (yet), can we "recreate" them? Maybe do a quota lookup for the user (database or file)? This can be done using a module I guess, so it could be "user configurable". Regards, Maikel Verheijen.

2 1

[Dovecot] Outlook Express 6.0.280.1123 SSL and dovecot .
by Xavier Beaudouin 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

Hello there, First many thanks for dovecot, this is marvelous piece of software :) One of my users is using Outlook Express 6.0.280.1123 on XP with SSL. I have lots of this in the syslog : Jul 22 16:25:31 kiwi imap-login: Login: fptarget [62.4.1.170] Jul 22 16:25:32 kiwi imap-login: SSL_read() syscall failed: EOF [62.4.1.170] Jul 22 16:25:59 kiwi imap-login: SSL_read() syscall failed: EOF [62.4.1.170] Jul 22 16:26:43 kiwi imap-login: Login: fptarget [62.4.1.170] Jul 22 16:26:45 kiwi imap-login: SSL_read() syscall failed: EOF [62.4.1.170] Jul 22 16:26:47 kiwi imap-login: Login: fptarget [62.4.1.170] Jul 22 16:26:48 kiwi imap-login: SSL_read() syscall failed: EOF [62.4.1.170] Is there any way to avoid that ? (except telling this user to stop using outlook ?). Thanks, /Xavier

2 1

RE: [Dovecot] Loadable module
by Maikel Verheijen 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

Hi Timo, When you have time to create the hooks to the various locations within dovecot, I am willing to try to make a module to support Maildir quota's. Would that be possible with the hooks, and can that be done using a plugin as well? Kind regards, Maikel Verheijen. > -----Original Message----- > From: Timo Sirainen [mailto:tss@iki.fi] > Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 12:14 AM > To: Maikel Verheijen > Cc: 'dovecot(a)procontrol.fi' > Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Loadable module > > > On Saturday, Jul 19, 2003, at 00:40 Europe/Helsinki, Maikel Verheijen > wrote: > > > I read a post about moving a .mailbixlist to a > .subscriptionfile when > > a user did not have one, but did have a .mailboxlist file. Timo > > emailed a module for that purpose, so it could be done for > this user. > > > > My question is: > > > > - Where and how does dovecot call this function? > > <module name>_init(); is called after initializing Dovecot's > core code, > but before opening any message store or creating client structure. I > think I'd have to add some hooks for store creation and > client creation > so you wouldn't need kludges if you want to modify them in some way. > > You'll have to enable modules of course in configuration file > and place > the module to right directory. > > > - Would it be easy to use a module to a) create a mailpath (can be > > done as the mailuser's id, I use one uid, and my path is > all owned by > > that uid), and b) simply remove a quota file? > > Yes, the modules can do whatever they want. Just use mkdir() and > unlink(). >

2 1

[Dovecot] migrating from uw imapd
by Craig 21 Jul '03

21 Jul '03

Hi, I'm trying to migrate from uw imapd to dovecot. I'm having two problems at the moment. 1. uw imapd grabs new mail from /var/mail/user and then shoves it into ~/mbox, is there any way to make dovecot handle this kind of setup or am I better off merging ~/mbox back into /var/mail/user? If merging is better are what tools are best for this? 2. While I did have have everything in ~/Mail coming up dovetail stopped working and logs the following error: syslog:Jul 19 23:01:07 epsilon3 imap-login: Login: haakon [192.168.0.107] syslog:Jul 19 23:01:07 epsilon3 imap(haakon): Failed to create storage with data: ~/Mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/haakon syslog:Jul 19 23:01:07 epsilon3 dovecot: child 10417 (imap) returned error 89 any idea what is causing this? Regards, Craig.

7 6

Re: [Dovecot] How to use SASL2?
by Matthew Reimer 19 Jul '03

19 Jul '03

Timo Sirainen wrote: > On Fri, 2003-07-18 at 02:02, grpmind+dovecot(a)boromir.vpop.net wrote: > >>How does one use SASL2 for authentication? I looked for docs but found >>none. > > There's some code for supporting Cyrus' SASL library, but it hasn't been > tested for a while and I doubt that it works. I don't really have plans > to make it work either. > > Why do you want it anyway? Dovecot supports PLAIN, DIGEST-MD5 and > ANONYMOUS SASL mechanisms internally. Most important missing one is > Kerberos 5 I think. I'm not really interested in using SASL for its own sake, but because it's a way to get dovecot to authenticate against my mysql users db. I might try to write a patch to implement mysql support for dovecot, hopefully good enough for you to commit. Matt

1 0

[Dovecot] Loadable module
by Maikel Verheijen 19 Jul '03

19 Jul '03

Hi List! I read a post about moving a .mailbixlist to a .subscriptionfile when a user did not have one, but did have a .mailboxlist file. Timo emailed a module for that purpose, so it could be done for this user. My question is: - Where and how does dovecot call this function? - Would it be easy to use a module to a) create a mailpath (can be done as the mailuser's id, I use one uid, and my path is all owned by that uid), and b) simply remove a quota file? Thank you for your time, Maikel Verheijen. Ps: the email I am referring to has: Subject: Re: [Dovecot] 0.99.10-rc3 Message-Id: <1056538261.8144.38.camel@hurina> Date: 25 Jun 2003 13:51:01 +0300

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[Dovecot] Status of database integration / Willing to help
by Gregory Hartman 18 Jul '03

18 Jul '03

I a PhD student here at Carnegie Mellon. I have ten years of experience working in C in industry. I am working on a research project here at Carnegie Mellon that needs to integrate a database with mail clients. We are planning to use the IMAP protocol to communicate with the mail client. After I spent some time looking at the code of various IMAP server implementations, I got very interested in Dovecot. Then I noticed that you were planning to integrate Dovecot with a SQL database. Is this work in progress? Do you have a schema? Is there some way that I could help? -- Gregory Hartman <gghartma(a)cs.cmu.edu>

2 1

[Dovecot] How to use SASL2?
by grpmind+dovecot＠boromir.vpop.net 18 Jul '03

18 Jul '03

How does one use SASL2 for authentication? I looked for docs but found none. Thanks in advance. Matt

2 1

[Dovecot] Dovecot on Linux 2.6.0-test1-ac1
by Grahame Bowland 16 Jul '03

16 Jul '03

Hi all For various reasons I was looking into 2.6, so I installed a copy on my desktop. Everything works fine, except for dovecot - errors such as this appeared in the syslog: Jul 15 14:41:09 typhaon dovecot: Dovecot starting up Jul 15 14:41:12 typhaon imap-login: setuid(113) failed: Resource temporarily unavailable Jul 15 14:41:12 typhaon dovecot: Login process died too early - shutting down I can imagine why setuid() should ever fail, I've confirmed that the daemon is running as UID zero at the time it makes the call. However, the call succeeds if I comment out: restrict_process_size((unsigned int)-1, 1); on line 134 of src/login-common/main.c it starts to work again. It's very strange - I got the idea to try this from the list archives. I'm willing to track this down if anyone can suggest possible things in restrict_process_size() that might be causing this failure. All the other daemons that I run that need to drop root privileges work fine.. Cheers Grahame -- Grahame Bowland Email: grahame(a)ucs.uwa.edu.au University Communications Services Phone: +61 8 9380 1175 The University of Western Australia Fax: +61 8 9380 1109 CRICOS: 00126G

2 3

[Dovecot] Indexes again
by Timo Sirainen 16 Jul '03

16 Jul '03

A bit quiet here, so here's some more thoughts about indexes. Even though I was thinking only how to make them usable with NFS (I wrote it to doc/nfs.txt), it then occured to me that exactly the same tricks would help with local filesystem indexes as well. Especially the lockless reading would help with lock contention issues I was worrying about earlier with shared mailboxes. Also it occured to me that keeping maildir filenames fully synchronized in index file probably isn't very good idea from performance point of view.. BTW. I almost committed the .tree removal code to CVS today. Then I noticed that expunging ignores about half of the deleted messages. This could have been actually happening with the old code in some situations as well, although it probably would have skipped only a couple of messages. Anyway, fixing this properly takes some more time.. -------- Ideas how to make indexes work pretty well with NFS: Reading shouldn't require locks, so modifying should be done using only atomic operations. These include: - Replacing the file completely using rename() - We probably can't assume that writing more than one byte at a time is atomic. If we have to modify a larger dataset, we could do: - struct { bit_t use_first; dataset_t first; dataset_t second; } - when reading, we use first if use_first is set, second if it's unset - when writing, we first write to the non-used variable, only then we update the flag. - This of course requires twice the amount of space for dataset plus one extra bit, so it shouldn't be used too much - If data can be only set, but never changed, we need only one extra bit to specify if the data is set. - Appending new data to end of file. We'd have to have used_file_size variable in header, done like described above. - Each cached message record would have a pointer to next part, so more cached data could be appended to file. Message flags are the most commonly modified data. If we just modify them directly, a simultaneous read might catch the change only partially. But luckily for us, this is accepted behaviour so we can do it. Another commonly modified data is maildir filenames. We probably want to store only the base name in index and keep the full name synchronized only locally. Compressing unused data from index files would have to be done by rewriting the index into index.lock file and renaming it over the index file. All file operations should probably be done with lseek(), read() and write() to avoid extra network traffic. There should be some clever read-ahead caching however.

1 0

[Dovecot] New indexing code
by Timo Sirainen 14 Jul '03

14 Jul '03

If someone's interested, here's an explanation and test code how I was planning on replacing the current .imap.index.tree file's functionality. The .tree file will be removed so you'll save some disk/memory as well, something like 5-20% of whole indexes.

1 0

RE: [Dovecot] dovecot.procontrol.fi anonymous access fails?
by Maikel Verheijen 14 Jul '03

14 Jul '03

> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 09:23:04AM +0200, Maikel Verheijen wrote: > > When I tried connecting using MS outlook express, it is complaining > > about the fact that the folders aren't subscribed. If they are not > > subscribed, you cannot read them... :( > > OK, added the subscriptions now. Ah great! :) Thanks, Maikel Verheijen.

1 0

RE: [Dovecot] dovecot.procontrol.fi anonymous access fails?
by Maikel Verheijen 14 Jul '03

14 Jul '03

Hi List, When I tried connecting using MS outlook express, it is complaining about the fact that the folders aren't subscribed. If they are not subscribed, you cannot read them... :( I did read through the archives using mutt though, that worked quite well! :) Regards, Maikel Verheijen. Ps: did not try it lately, maybe Timo changed the subscription status of the folders in between.... > -----Original Message----- > From: Timo Sirainen [mailto:tss@iki.fi] > Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 6:10 PM > To: dovecot(a)procontrol.fi > Subject: Re: [Dovecot] dovecot.procontrol.fi anonymous access fails? > > > On Sunday, Jul 13, 2003, at 18:47 Europe/Helsinki, Marco > Molteni wrote: > > > I was using a patched sylpheed that doesn't support ANONYMOUS > > authentication, so I gave anonymous as username and empty password, > > but it failed as shown in the following trace: > > > > 2 LOGIN anonymous > > 2 BAD Error in IMAP command received by server. > > Sylpheed is buggy and doesn't give password parameter. It should have > said: > > 2 login anonymous "" >

2 1