- dovecot - dovecot.org

[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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