- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] PERMANENTFLAGS bug?
by Nils Henrik Tvetene 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hi, Im new to the list, so might be a FAQ allthough I havent found it anywhere: When I try to connect to dovecot/imap from snappermail (palm), I get a IMAP protocol error. The complaint is about: OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft ) \*)] Flags permitted. As you can see, theres an extra " )" after "Draft". Any clues on how to fix/bypass this? Regards, Nils Henrik Tvetene

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[Dovecot] Dovecot 1.0-stable mbox performance and disconnections
by Chris Wakelin 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

I've got some of our busiest users now using Dovecot instead of UW-IMAP with mbox-format mailboxes and predominantly Outlook Express as the client. Doing some perfomance monitoring (with Solaris 8 process accounting), it looks like Dovecot needing to read only 30-50% of the disk blocks needed by UW-IMAP, but I was hoping for better! What seems to happen, is that most of the connections use only a small number of blocks (due to Dovecot indexes, presumably) but occassionally a process will read lots of blocks, sometimes even more than a UW-IMAP session. Is this expected, or is something going wrong with the index updates? I have the default sync settings, I think (mbox_dirty_syncs = yes, mbox_very_dirty_syncs = no, mbox_lazy_writes = yes) My INBOX is an extreme example with ~10,000 messages and most processes reading a few hundred blocks but a couple using 20,000 or so! Also, Dovecot seems to be dropping connections, sometimes, for no good reason (putting some extra i_info lines suggests for "inactivity"). Thunderbird tends to reconnect automatically, though. It seems it may be happening at the end of an IDLE command, something like:- 4 IDLE + idling * 1005 EXISTS DONE * 1005 EXPUNGE but then the expected 4 OK Idle completed never comes. Has anybody else seen this? Best Wishes, Chris -- --+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+- Christopher Wakelin, c.d.wakelin(a)reading.ac.uk IT Services Centre, The University of Reading, Tel: +44 (0)118 378 8439 Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK Fax: +44 (0)118 975 3094

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[Dovecot] newbie questions
by Stewart Dean 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Thanks in advance for your patience and assistance. Since a system administrator's work is most successful when nobody knows you've done anything....(ugly that...you get neither raises nor equipment funding as a result), I prefer to learn from other's experiences rather than fail in the same pits. We are considering a switch from UW to Dovecot, since our users persist in using the INBOX as a file cabinet (maybe 25% use homedir folders) and we currently have, I think, .mbox INBOXes which are thus getting massively unmanageable and fragile. Machine config: Running IBM AIX 5.2/5.3 on an F80 with 4GB memory (may be upgraded to 16GB), with IBM's sendmail binary at V8.11.6p2, hand compiled procmail at 3.22, 64-bit binary from C for AIX V6.0 Some questions I couldn't find answered in the docs: 1) Crispin of UW has a formats.txt file in which he lists and evaluates the various formats. He calls the INBOX format type we use .unix (one big honking flat file). Q1: Is this what is described in the Dovecot docs mail-storages.txt file as .mbox? 2) Authentication: The DC docs don't mention using NIS/yp for authentication, that I can find. Q2: Does DC support NIS/yp authentication? I guess I could periodically do a ypcat passwd to a file and point DC at it... 3) on IBM's AIX Unix... Q3: Is there anyone out there running DC on AIX? 5.x or 4.3.3? JFS or JFS2? 4) Inbox location/format: = I will want to move from our legacy .mbox format to, I suppose, the DC default of Maildir++. = I will want to do this in groups over time, rather than all at once, so both formats will have to work = The legacy location of INBOXes has been /var/spool/mail/<userid>. The docs appear to say that Maildir format INBOXes should be in ~/Maildir. Q4:Can the INBOXes be in two location, the converted new Maildirs in ~, and the old unconverted in vsm? Or will I have to override the DC cfg'ed INBOX location to be VSM until I get them all converted and then move them all to ~/Maildir and change the DC config to that? 5) Some mention was made of procmail configuration issues Q5: Can procmail support both formats/locations, or will I have to put changes in the migrated users' procmailrc (what fun!)? Again, thanks! -- ==== 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] mysql
by Jim Edwards 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hello, Does dovecot require mysql in order to work? Fedora rpms are claiming mysql dependencies. I'm sure you're aware of the long-lived arguement of postgresql v. mysql. If it wasn't your intention to force this, then please snarl at Red Hat. If it was your intention, then grrrrr! Thanks for this product. I like it for it's speed and stability. Jim Edwards

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[Dovecot] bug: very strange behavior with pop3
by Yannick Majoros 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hello, We have some strange problem which could be related to authentication here. All our user info is in an openldap directory. We normally use pam/getpwent in dovecot to access our user accounts, via nss_ldap/pam_ldap, but we tried to connect directly to the ldap server, with the very same results. We have one user (out of 100) which just cannot use dovecot with pop3. His login/password are accepted, and then dovecot doesn't say anything. I am sure it isn't a client issue: same result with Eudora, Thunderbird and while directly connecting through openssl to POP3s port and "talking POP3". Here is some session transcript: +OK dovecot ready. USER rinstalle +OK PASS M=/)p365 +OK Logged in. And it then stops responding (without giving a reason, breaking the connection). Nothing in the logs, it sees this as a regular login and that's all... Now, it seems that when I copy this user in ldap, the new one occasionaly works. I first thought it did depend on the user name (uid or dn), but it doesn't seem to be the case. I think it is just random. Here is an ldif of this user: dn: uid=rinstalle,ou=divers,ou=login,ou=Autres,ou=Personnes,dc=inma,dc=ucl,dc= ac,dc=be uid: rinstalle cn: compte foireux homeDirectory: /home/xx sn: xxxx uidNumber: 9999 objectClass: top objectClass: person objectClass: inetOrgPerson objectClass: posixAccount gidNumber: 999 ... And getent result (with nss_ldap): #getent passwd rinstalle rinstalle:x:9999:999:compte foireux:/home/xx: To be complete, I should mention that it _does_ work when using local password files... I solved the user problem just by copying his entry a few times. Now, I don't think it is purely ldap-related, as the login _is_ accepted. Is there some guru out here who could help us? Thank you, -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yannick Majoros http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros Informaticien AUTO-INMA/FSA/UCL CSAM 4, avenue G. Lemaître B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve Belgium Tel: +32-10-47.80.10 Fax: +32-10-47.21.80 #JAPH : http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros/japh.txt Si vous avez des problèmes pour afficher ce message (accents qui ne passent pas, signature électronique, ...) votre système de mail n'est pas conforme aux standards, voir http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros/email.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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[Dovecot] weird IDLE behaviour
by Johannes Berg 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hi, So I was testing things with inotify notifications enabled and noticed that when I a) select a mailbox other than the inbox b) IDLE c) copy mail into the /new folder in that mailbox nothing happens! So I straced it and it always opens the inbox's new/ and cur/ directories for notifications. Is that the correct behaviour? I assumed that if I select some mailbox other than the inbox, IDLE should inform me of status updates in that box, since RFC 2177 says: The Internet Message Access Protocol [IMAP4] requires a client to poll the server for changes to the selected mailbox (new mail, deletions). Now, I get this behaviour by applying the attached patch. But even if I'm wrong, dovecot doesn't implement any sensible behaviour, as it only ever creates *any* notifications during IDLE when the INBOX is selected. [hm. note that I'm only testing maildir] johannes

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[Dovecot] xinetd + dovecot
by vlad 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hello dovecot, Help me running imapd & pop3d server on xinetd. My file: # cat /etc/xinetd.d/pop-3 service pop3 { disable = no socket_type = stream protocol = tcp wait = no user = root server = /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login } ####################################### # cat /etc/xinetd.d/imap service imap { disable = no socket_type = stream protocol = tcp wait = no user = root server = /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login flags = IPv4 log_type = FILE /var/log/mail/dovecot log_on_success = PID HOST USERID } ####################################### But... # nmap 192.168.1.1 Starting nmap 3.70 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2005-07-12 16:53 YEKST Interesting ports on myhost.ru (192.168.1.1): (The 1653 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed) PORT STATE SERVICE 25/tcp open smtp 80/tcp open http 110/tcp open pop3 143/tcp open imap 3128/tcp open squid-http ########### # telnet 192.168.1.1 143 Trying 192.168.1.1... Connected to 192.168.1.1. Escape character is '^]'. Fatal: EOF while reading environment from master Connection closed by foreign host. # telnet 192.168.1.1 110 Trying 192.168.1.1... Connected to 192.168.1.1. Escape character is '^]'. Fatal: EOF while reading environment from master Connection closed by foreign host. Help :) -- With best wishes, vlad mailto:faktroot@mail.ru System/Network Administrator TV/Video Engineer ICQ 163227020 ---------------------------------------------- В любом из нас спит гений. И с каждым днем все крепче...

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[Dovecot] POP retrieval, then reading, of mail does not udpate server status.
by Paul Vatta 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

We are currently using the version of Dovecot (0.99.11) that comes with Redhat Enterpise Linux version 4, running on an IBM x445 server (8 CPU, hyperthreading on, 14GB RAM) using the maildir format. We have had to patch this with a change from 0.99.12 so that it doesn't incorrectly report SASL capability upon connection but otherwise it is the version supplied with the OS (we do this to ensure that we don't deviate from the supplied packages too much). The problem encountered is the status of emails on the server isn't being updated. The POP client (Eudora 6.2 in this instance) will retrieve the message, have the message read, apparently update the status on the server (via the "Check Mail" function), but yet the status on the server has not been updated as read (verified by going into our IMP Webmail client, and looking at the mail message in the mailstore - there is no ".S" extension). Using the IMAP protocol doesn't bring about this behaviour. The inconsistency The inconsistency between POP clients and the server status doesn't occur when it comes to deleting messages. Is this a bug, or have we misunderstood how the POP protocol works. Looking at the following: http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/2587hq.html I'm guessing that the POP protocol doesn't update the status? Your confirmation would be most appreciated. Thanks, Paul P.S. As an aside, if you are hesitant about the move from mbox to maildir, don't consider this an obstacle. Our migration was painless and the benefits far outweigh the conversion effort. Dovecot has introduced huge improvements over our Qpopper/UW-IMAP configuration.

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[Dovecot] Calypso or Opera Mail problem?
by Obantec Support 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hi Are there any know issues with dovecot using pop3 & (Calypso or Opera Mail) ? Jul 11 09:14:47 proteus2a pop3(cambcom_brianlj): File isn't in mbox format: /var/spool/mail/cambcom_brianlj Jul 11 09:14:47 proteus2a pop3(cambcom_brianlj): Couldn't open INBOX: Internal error occurred. Error report written to server log. [2005-07-11 09:14:47 there is a file cambcom_brianlj and using webmin or neomail the mails can be read. Mark -- Obantec Support

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Re: [Dovecot] mysql
by Dominic Marks 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

On Tuesday 12 July 2005 14:55, Peter Evans wrote: > Tomi Hakala (tomi.hakala(a)clinet.fi) wrote: > > Jim Edwards wrote: > > > Does dovecot require mysql in order to work? > > > > For common email serving with IMAP and POP3, no. > > For IMAP and POP3 session proxying with 1.0-test releases, yes. > > Ew, YUCK. > Why does everyone think $DATABASE is the panacea for all ills? Why you think this is a misuse of a database? Shared network storage might not have been the original purpose, but most DBs can do a pretty good job of this. > Just because they can't/won't cope with multiplicity, does not > mean that X megabytes of general purpose database and all the > overheads have to be used. I can't tell if you have a problem with databases in general, or just the MySQL implementation from this. I guess that you could modify the code easily to use another DBMS which is much smaller such as sqlite. > If it's just proxying, why can't it speak LDAP, or even just a > plain file ... Why write code from scratch when you can use an API for a trusted piece of software which is likely to be available on most systems already? > P > > (I haven't looked at 1.0-test-903 yet, I think I'm still on 70 > something, but no way am I installing mysql ...) Cheers, -- Dominic Marks

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