- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] v1.1.alpha1 released
by Timo Sirainen 21 Jul '07

21 Jul '07

http://dovecot.org/releases/1.1/alpha/dovecot-1.1.alpha1.tar.gz http://dovecot.org/releases/1.1/alpha/dovecot-1.1.alpha1.tar.gz.sig This is the first alpha release of Dovecot v1.1. I hope that it stabilizes into final release within a few months. There are a lot of new features since v1.0. The most important ones are listed at the end of this post. This is the only v1.1.alpha announcement I send to dovecot-news list (or to www.dovecot.org news). The next one probably will be v1.1.rc1. I've been stress testing the code a lot and I've also been using it myself for almost a year, so I think this release should actually be quite stable and usable. But since I haven't tested everything, there might be some crashes and misbehaving commands. So this release should now have all the major features that I intend to add to v1.1 (except for dbox rewrite, see below). Some smaller features will still be added. The rest of the major features in my previous v1.1 list will go to v1.2. While v1.1 is getting stabilized I'm beginning to rewrite dbox code. Its code is isolated from the rest of Dovecot, so it can't destabilize anything else. Hopefully it will be ready before v1.1 release, although maybe still marked as experimental. Some of the features might not be considered quite ready yet: - Mailbox list indexes improve STATUS performance a lot (maybe 7x) when mailboxes haven't changed. Handling updates however is a lot slower than I'd want (2x with one client, more with multiple), so you may want to disable them with mailbox_list_index_disable=yes until the update performance gets better. - THREAD code is completely rewritten with support for incremental updates and index files. I tested it last year and it seemed OK, but I didn't dare try it now so I wouldn't have to delay this alpha if it was broken :) I'll do some more testing soon, but for now be careful with using v1.1 with webmails. - SORT code also uses indexes now, but it's a lot simpler so it probably works. - Squat indexes work and I'm using them myself, but they'll be rewritten for v1.2 with a new faster format. - Although Dovecot now flushes NFS attribute/data caches when needed, I'm not sure if it's done in all the necessary places. - I don't remember if I've tested expire plugin at all. So, the largest changes I've added to NEWS file (which BTW won't contain changes between alphas/betas/rcs, those will be only in my mailing list posts): * After Dovecot v1.1 has modified index or dovecot-uidlist files, they can't be opened anymore with Dovecot versions earlier than v1.0.2. * Empty passwords in passdb doesn't allow user to log in with any password anymore. To do that you'll also need to set nopassword extra field. + IMAP: Added support for UIDPLUS and LIST-EXTENDED extensions. + IMAP SORT: Sort keys are indexed, which makes SORT commands faster. + IMAP THREAD: Threads are indexed into a dovecot.index.thread file. It can usually be updated incrementally, so this makes THREAD fast. + Added Dovecot-specific X-REFERENCES2 threading algorithm. It's similar to REFERENCES, but it doesn't do base subject merging and it sorts the threads by their newest message. + When saving messages, update cache file immediately with the data that we expect client to fetch later. Maildir-only currently. + NFS attribute and data caches are are flushed whenever needed. See mail_nfs_storage and mail_nfs_index settings. + Mailbox list indexes. Mailbox metadata is stored there, so STATUS commands can return synchronized mailboxes' metadata simply by reading a single mailbox list index file. Currently works only with Maildir++ layout. + Out of order command execution (SEARCH, FETCH, LIST), nonstandard command cancellation (X-CANCEL <tag>) + Expire plugin can be used to keep track of oldest messages in specific mailboxes. A nightly run can then quickly expunge old messages from the mailboxes that have them. The tracking is done using lib-dict, so you can use either Berkeley DB or SQL database. + Namespaces are supported everywhere now. + Full text search indexing support with Lucene and Squat backends. + OTP and S/KEY authentication mechanisms (by Andrey Panin). + mbox and Maildir works with both Maildir++ and FS layouts. You can change these by appending :LAYOUT=maildir++ or :LAYOUT=fs to mail_location. + LDAP: Support templates in pass_attrs and user_attrs + Support for listening in multiple IPs/ports. + Quota plugin rewrite: Support for multiple quota roots, warnings, allow giving storage size in bytes or kilo/mega/giga/terabytes, per-mailbox quota rules.

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[Dovecot] PLAIN.B64 Password Scheme Patch Missing in Dovecot 1.0.2
by imacat 20 Jul '07

20 Jul '07

Dear all, Hi. This is imacat from Taiwan. I've just downloaded the newly-released Dovecot 1.0.2, but found that the PLAIN.B64 password scheme patch seems to be missing. http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2007-May/022610.html Is there any reason for this? Thank you very much. -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' <imacat(a)mail.imacat.idv.tw> PGP Key: http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc <<Woman's Voice>> News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's: http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ TLUG List Manager: http://lists.linux.org.tw/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tlug

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[Dovecot] Slower than Courier-IMAP
by Nejc Škoberne 20 Jul '07

20 Jul '07

Hello, I have been running Courier-IMAP for while now, and I decided that I'd like to try Dovecot. This paper: http://student.iu.hio.no/~s132278/reports/disney_imap_maildir.pdf says that the performances are somewhat comparable, but my Dovecot "feels" slower than Courier-IMAP. I am using Maildirs and I have substantial amounts of emails in them. For example one of the folder has 26000 messages and to display a message it takes 6-7 seconds. Before it took only 2-3 seconds to display a message (in Thunderbird). I have tried to turn "fsync_disable" to yes, but the feeling is somewhat the same. What else can I try to tune? It's a FreeBSD 6.2 machine on a HP ProLiant ML350 with 2GB RAM and 120GB SATA disk and the Dovecot running in a FreeBSD jail. You can find my dovecot.conf here: http://pastebin.ca/627442 Thanks, Nejc

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[Dovecot] Quota warning patch and config parsing in 1.0.2
by Doug Council 20 Jul '07

20 Jul '07

Dovecot 1.0.2 patches and compiles fine with the quota warning patch (http://www.dovecot.org/patches/quota-warning.patch) But, when parsing the configuration file , deliver now seems to strip all of the spaces in the QUOTA_WARNING environment variable, generating an error. This is the plugin{} section from my dovecot.conf: plugin { quota = maildir:storage=20480 quota_warning = storage=10% /usr/local/bin/quota-warning } And this is the error Dovecot generates for anyone with a quota: quota warning: No command specified: storage=10/usr/local/bin/quota-warning Doing a diff on src/deliver/deliver.c between 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 show some changes to how the config file is parsed, but nothing I can find that would cause the spaces to get stripped out of the configuration value. Has anyone successfully used the quota warning patch with 1.0.2? Thanks, -Doug

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[Dovecot] telnet connection refused
by Neil Robins 20 Jul '07

20 Jul '07

I'm running Dovecot 1.0 with Postfix and Amavisd-new on FreeBSD 2.6-RELEASE. Mail was working OK until I put a new mailbox on but then it stopped. Dovecot appears to be running but it doesn't show up in "Top" nor when I run "ps -aucx". I also can't telnet to it on port 110 either at localhost or at the mail server (Connection refused). Can telnet to port 25 (Postfix) no problem. Any suggestions very much appreciated. I know this is an imap group but it's the only Dovecot group I could find. Thanks,

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[Dovecot] fine-grained user authentication support
by Adam Jacob Muller 19 Jul '07

19 Jul '07

Hi, I'm wondering if it's possible to have some users restricted to only login via POP3 or only IMAP (likewise for IMAPS/POP3S). Returning a particular field with the userdb sql query (protocols=imaps did not work), perhaps setting up a different passdb? Is this possible with dovecot? -Adam

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[Dovecot] errmsg question
by Stewart Dean 19 Jul '07

19 Jul '07

Am seeing: > Jul 19 14:59:19 mercury mail:err|error dovecot: IMAP(jab): dotlock /var/spool/mail/jab.lock was immediately delet > ed under us > Jul 19 14:59:19 mercury mail:err|error dovecot: IMAP(jab): file_lock_dotlock() failed with mbox file /var/spool/m > ail/jab: No such file or directory what does it mean, what should I be doing to alleviate or troubleshoot the problem? -- ==== Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504 sdean(a)bard.edu voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035

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[Dovecot] sluggish updating of gnome mail-notification?
by Greg Troxel 19 Jul '07

19 Jul '07

Sorry if this is a repeat query. I am running dovecot 1.0.2 under NetBSD/i386 (3.1 and 4.0ish). I use maildirs, and deliver into them with procmail. For clients I use Gnus (CVS head) mostly and thunderbird, and also the gnome mail-notification status applet (4.0). Gnus fixed a bug in the last few months where exiting a group didn't unselect the folder and thus didn't necessarily push read marks back. Mostly everything works perfectly. When new mail arrives, thunderbird shows it as new/unread, gnus will find it with 'g', and mail-notification shows it as well. After reading it in gnus, when I exit the group (which pushes read marks to the IMAP server), thunderbird usually shows the message as read immediately, but often mail-notification waits for a while (up to about a minute) before withdrawing the new-mail notification. I just tried this and thunderbird was also slow in showing the mail read. marking the message read in thunderbird caused mail-notification to show the message as read, but with a 30s lag. mail-notification is supposed to use IDLE if available. Sometimes it withdraws new-mail claims at the right time. I know that I need to turn on debugging and trace all this. So I'm really just asking if anyone else has seen this or similar behavior.

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[Dovecot] Performance question
by Stewart Dean 19 Jul '07

19 Jul '07

I now have Dovecot in production and things are apparently trouble-free. The one known problem is that initial client inbox load can take 30 seconds - 2 minutes. For instance: 'I got fed up waiting and went and got coffee'...this with a 3MB mbox inbox...and my mail server is a substantial machine consuming 25% CPU just for this person's IMAP session. I realize that a certain amount of performance piggishness is inevitable with large mbox inboxes (the prize goes to the user with a 500MB inbox). Eventually, I plan to move to maildir format, but for now I'm here. Also, we have legacy requirement for procmail, so I can't currently use deliver. Questions: 1) Any tuning I can do to improve this? 2) Any metrics, troubleshooting I should be doing to better characterize the problem? -- ==== Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504 sdean(a)bard.edu voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035

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[Dovecot] avoiding getting maildir cur/ folder contents?
by Johannes Berg 19 Jul '07

19 Jul '07

Hi, On my server with many mails in one folder and slow IO, getting the mail listing in the cur/ folder is becoming a serious bottleneck. Dovecot is the only thing accessing the mail folders, so would there be any way to avoid getting a listing all the time? johannes

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