- dovecot - dovecot.org

Replication only sporadic
by Lucas Rothamel - Eye Catching Webdesign 24 Oct '14

24 Oct '14

Hello dear Dovecot Gurus, I am setting up two servers with Dovecot replication as hot-standby servers for a small high availability cluster, switch-over through DNS-redirect. For testing purposes, both servers are generating a small test mail every few minutes and delivering to the local dovecot each. In my mail client, I added both servers through IMAP to watch how the replication is working. However, I noted that replication is very sporadic: sometimes a new email is received "instantaneous" by both servers, then no replication updates are visible for hours, and suddenly all missing mail appear in the other server. Why is this? Can this be changed to be more realtime? Thank you! Lucas doveconf -n: # 2.2.14: /usr/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 x86_64 Debian 7.7 ext4 auth_mechanisms = plain login cram-md5 disable_plaintext_auth = no info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot-info.log log_timestamp = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S " mail_debug = yes mail_location = maildir:/home/%d/%n/Maildir mail_plugins = " notify replication" mail_privileged_group = mail passdb { args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf driver = sql } plugin { mail_replica = remote:vmail@... quota = maildir:User quota quota_rule = *:storage=1GB replication_full_sync_interval = 1 hours } protocols = imap pop3 service aggregator { fifo_listener replication-notify-fifo { mode = 0600 user = vmail } unix_listener replication-notify { mode = 0600 user = vmail } } service auth { unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth { group = postfix mode = 0660 user = postfix } user = root } service config { unix_listener config { user = vmail } } service doveadm { user = vmail } service replicator { process_min_avail = 1 } ssl_cert = ... ssl_key = ... userdb { args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf driver = sql } protocol imap { mail_plugins = quota imap_quota } protocol pop3 { mail_plugins = quota pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv } protocol lda { info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot-lda.log mail_plugins = quota postmaster_address = ... } -- Lucas Rothamel Eye Catching Webdesign info(a)eye-catching-webdesign.de - www.eye-catching-webdesign.de You know, we go to the gym to keep the body fit. Similarly the mind needs some rest. The mind is bombarded with so many impressions. Our mind has been bombarded by impressions the whole time. It needs a different kind of rest other than sleep. And meditation is such a rest. It calms the mind. energizes the spirit and makes the body more strong and vibrant. improves the immune system. The immune cells, the T-cell count go higher through Sudarshan Kriya and meditation. And you feel so nice inside. - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. -- Douglas Adams

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Sieve Advice Needed, Please
by Casey Bralla 24 Oct '14

24 Oct '14

Anybody here familiar with the Sieve language? I'm rebuilding my mail server, and I am working with the sieve language to automatically filter spam into a separate account. However, I've hit a snag that I can't get around. BTW, I'm using a clean install of dovecot, postfix, spamassassin on Debian 7.5. I want to do server-side spam filtering, so I've got spamasassin identifying spam, and then have sieve sorting the mail to a special spam folder. I can easily send spam to special folder in the inbox for each mail user, but I wanted to have a single mail account for spam. I can use the "redirect" sieve command to send anything with the X-spam-flag set, but this triggers an error and bounces the offending mail. The bounce message is: From: MAILER-DAEMON(a)NerdWorld.org (Mail Delivery System) To: casey(a)vmailservertest.nerdworld.org Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 16:41:49 -0400 (EDT) This is the mail system at host VMailServerTest.NerdWorld.org. I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below. For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster. If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message. The mail system <spam(a)vmailservertest.nerdworld.org>: mail forwarding loop for spam(a)vmailservertest.nerdworld.org From: casey(a)vmailservertest.nerdworld.org Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 16:41:20 -0400 (EDT) viagra!!!! www.viagra.com I think this is a recursion problem, since the redirected mail has to go through the spamassassin check and sieve again. I tried to get clever and prevent the recursion, but I'm not clever enough. Here is my sieve rule file. # # # A rule to move spam to the spam user # based on spamassassin setting the spam flag # # # require ["redirect"]; (Not needed, since it is part of the basis sieve spec) # # rule:[SPAM] if header :contains "X-Spam-Flag" ["YES"] { if address :is "to" "Spam(a)VMailServerTest.NerdWorld.org" { keep; } else { redirect "spam(a)VMailServerTest.NerdWorld.org"; } } # # # Anybody able to give me any advice? TIA -- Casey Bralla Chief Nerd in Residence The NerdWorld Organisation www.NerdWorld.org

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Re: special "what's my ip" pop account
by Joseph Tam 24 Oct '14

24 Oct '14

Steffen Kaiser writes: > let's put aside the question, if this way is sensible or not. [... continuing in nonsensible mode ...] > And if you are at it, maybe a dummy server with a self-made script that > returns "+OK POP3 your IP is ....", then return +FAIL for any further > command. Been there, done that (for a different problem). Not all mail readers will show you banners; to make this really work, you have to implement USER and PASS (accepts anything), STAT and LIST (one message available), RETR (dump your informational message payload), QUIT (disconnect), maybe TOP, and everything else is an +OK no-op. I patched Qualcomm's qpopper to do this. As to whether the OP *should* do this, definitely not. Find a better solution. Joseph Tam <jtam.home(a)gmail.com>

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Public root folder is \Noselect
by G H 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

I am utilizing a public namespace via http://wiki2.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes/Public and using sdbox storage format. How can I get rid of the \Noselect flag that is set by default for this folder? IMAP output: b LIST "" "*" * LIST (\HasNoChildren \Sent) "/" Sent * LIST (\HasNoChildren \Trash) "/" Trash * LIST (\Noselect \HasNoChildren) "/" Public * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" INBOX If this is not possible, what is the best way to create a sub-folder in here upon system setup (one w/o a \Noselect flag)? Thanks, G H

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special "what's my ip" pop account
by A. Schulze 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

Hello, I like to enable the allow_nets Feature (http://wiki2.dovecot.org/PasswordDatabase/ExtraFields/AllowNets) for my customers. To help them knowing there own IP I imagine a special mailbox/loginuser at the pop3 server. That user could give a valid pop3 answer from a dummy pop3 server or simply throw a login error with customised answer containing the IP information. Has anybody done something similar or ideas to build such a system? Thanks for ideas Andreas

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What is the correct way to configure the mail_location option for Mailidr format?
by deoren 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

Short version: What is the correct way to configure the mail_location option for Mailidr format? I've long had it setup this way: mail_location = maildir:/var/vmail/%d/%n based on this guide: https://www.linode.com/docs/email/postfix/email-with-postfix-dovecot-and-my… Is that correct? Longer version: After upgrading from Dovecot v2.0.x to v2.2.x yesterday I'm coming to the conclusion that I've got it configured wrong. This is probably compounded by my bright idea of explicitly setting the path separator prior to the upgrade like so: separator = . Because we're using Maildir I thought it would be useful to explicitly set the separator value to what the default is for Maildir. I figured this would be a good way to remind myself what the separator is by default. I also figured while I was merging the conf changes between v2.0 and v2.2 I could roll that additional change in also. Looks like that was a bad idea to include unnecessary changes until things had stabilized. I should know better; I was too optimistic for my own good. Here is an example error message I ran into: stat(/var/vmail/example.com/username/.dovecot.lda-dupes/tmp) failed: Not a directory which is nearly identical (other than leading path) to what is shown here: http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2010-April/048227.html Steffen Kaiser responded with, "You should not (must not) have home == maildir root." That is when I double-checked the guide that I mentioned above and found that I had followed their directions exactly for that conf setting. Looking at some other guides/tutorials shows something more like: mail_location = maildir:/var/vmail/%d/%n/Maildir I assume the latter is how it's supposed to be done? If so, that would explain the problems I've had with Sieve scripts in the past until I explicitly set 'sieve_dir' like so: sieve_dir = /var/vmail/sieve/%d/%n/sieve_dir I did review the official docs here: http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailLocation/Maildir but I didn't find where it explicitly warns against setting home == maildir root. It should probably be apparent, but it wasn't to me when I first configured that setting. Thanks in advance for your help. If it turns out that the linode.com guide is wrong I'll create a Pull request to have that guide updated.

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Re: dictionary attack defense
by Joseph Tam 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

Cliff Hayes writes: > a) I read about auth_failure_delay even before I posted my question and > I could not figure out the one-line explanation in the dovecot wiki: > "Number of seconds to delay before replying to failed authentications." > It's delaying a reply. Does that mean the hacker can keep asking as > fast as he wants? As Reindl states, authentication is a synchronous operation so the BFD attacker must wait for a reply before continuing. An attacker can get around this by running a botnet against you or opening up many concurrent connections (I think the latter can be capped), but I've rarely seen this. A botnet attack will defeat IP based blocking anyways. > Is it per user or per IP? Irrelevant -- there is no tracking. It's simply pauses the reply to bad auth attempts and tarpits the session. auth_failure_delay does not block BFD attacks, but makes it infeasable for reasonable strength passwords. It's simpler to implement, robust, and fault tolerant (e.g. a user cannot accidentally lock themselves out requiring administrative intervention to restore immediate access, or repeated failures from a NAT'd network does not DoS everything within the NAT'd network). Joseph Tam <jtam.home(a)gmail.com>

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How to configure read-only access during a migration?
by Jeffrey Tunison 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

Hi. I would appreciate your advice about this PROBLEM: ======================================================= Find the simplest way to configure a Dovecot 2.2.10 IMAP server to access existing email users' (mbox-format) mail folders via a master_user ****in read-only mode.**** (I've got the master_user access working.) Simplest because while I'm proficient at UNIX systems administration, I'm under time pressure and dovecot has a lot of configuration flexibility. Identifying the right way to do this is proving time- consuming. Namespaces? ACL's? Passdb's? Mounting the mail-containing file systems in read-only mode did not work. (Would it have worked if I had disabled all file-locking rules (if so, how?)?) I thought it was time to bring in the dovecot wizards. You! GOAL: ======================================================= Without knowing or changing users' passwords, migrate several hundred users of dovecot IMAP to MS Exchange using the commercial product Transend. I'm manging the dovecot side, someone else is doing the Transend/Exchange piece. Migration would occur in batches due to slowness of the Transend side when dealing with users with email collections over a few gigabytes. I have a production IMAP server (dovecot 1.0.13 on 32-bit RHEL 4.9). Let's call it PROD for short. Users INBOXes are stored locally on PROD. Their other mail folders are stored on a second machine and accessed via NFS. Those other folders contain the great majority of the email to be migrated. Let's call the NFS server MIGR for short. On MIGR, I've set up a migration IMAP server (dovecot 2.2.10 on 64-bit RHEL 5.10). MIGR is a dedicated NFS server with newer hardware than PROD. It has an unused Ethernet NIC I can tell Transend to use. Both PROD and MIGR use NIS for authentication. Therefore PAM is consulted for passdb information, normally. No SQL db's used. I set up the second server (MIGR) for several reasons: 1) there are some users mail folders larger than the 32-bit file size limit found on the PROD server. 2) the bulk of the email is stored locally on the MIGR server. 3) the version of dovecot is much newer and therefore more likely to have fewer bugs and more configuration options. 4) I don't want to modify the production environment except where really necessary. Pointing Transend at MIGR instead of PROD seems like it will be faster and better. Telling end-users to use MIGR instead of PROD would allow them to verify that their email came across okay (into MS Exchange) without being able to modify the original copy of email (in Dovecot). In the days and weeks after migration. I'd like to disable access ***for a batch of users*** on the PROD server at the time the migration begins for that batch. I may need to re-enable access on PROD for certain users if the migration does not succeed. Transend has been dying on a number of test users despite tweaking its parameters in consultation with the vendor. "Corrupt" messages seem to be the issue. Users (or sysadmins) might be required to identify and delete the offending messages before we retry their migration. (Which folders and which messages are causing problems will hopefully be discernible in Transend logs.) Ha! If you've read this far, then I'd also say that I welcome any advice on changes to increase performance on MIGR, such as whether trying to minimize indexing as I've done is useful. Current configurations of the two servers follow. =========================================================================== PRODUCTION: =========================================================================== # 1.0.13: /etc/dovecot.conf log_path: /var/log/dovecot.log info_log_path: /var/log/dovecot.log protocols: imaps imap listen: *:143 ssl_listen: *:993 ssl_cert_file: /etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem ssl_key_file: /etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.key login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_processes_count: 20 login_max_processes_count: 500 max_mail_processes: 1524 first_valid_uid: 100 mail_location: mbox:~/Mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u:INDEX=/var/spool/dovecot-indexes/%u/ mbox_read_locks: dotlock mbox_write_locks: dotlock mbox_dotlock_change_timeout: 60 mbox_min_index_size: 2048 namespace: type: private separator: / inbox: yes namespace: type: private separator: / prefix: Mail/ hidden: yes namespace: type: private separator: / prefix: ~/Mail/ hidden: yes namespace: type: private separator: / prefix: mail/ hidden: yes namespace: type: private separator: / prefix: ~/mail/ hidden: yes auth default: master_user_separator: * verbose: yes debug: yes debug_passwords: yes passdb: driver: passwd-file args: /etc/dovecot.deny deny: yes passdb: driver: passwd-file args: /etc/dovecot.transend master: yes passdb: driver: shadow passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd =========================================================================== MIGRATION: =========================================================================== # 2.2.10: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 2.6.18-348.18.1.el5 x86_64 Scientific Linux release 5.10 (Boron) auth_debug = yes auth_debug_passwords = yes auth_master_user_separator = * auth_verbose = yes auth_verbose_passwords = plain disable_plaintext_auth = no first_valid_uid = 100 log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log mail_debug = yes mail_location = mbox:~/Mail:INBOX=/var/spool/concmail/%u:INDEX=MEMORY mbox_min_index_size = 50048 B mbox_write_locks = fcntl namespace inbox { inbox = yes location = mailbox Drafts { special_use = \Drafts } mailbox Junk { special_use = \Junk } mailbox Sent { special_use = \Sent } mailbox "Sent Messages" { special_use = \Sent } mailbox Trash { special_use = \Trash } prefix = } namespace one { hidden = yes location = prefix = Mail/ separator = / } namespace three { hidden = yes location = prefix = mail/ separator = / } passdb { args = /etc/dovecot/deny-users deny = yes driver = passwd-file } passdb { args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot.transend driver = passwd-file master = yes } passdb { driver = pam } protocols = imap service imap-login { process_min_avail = 15 service_count = 10 } service imap { executable = imap postlogin process_limit = 2048 } service postlogin { executable = script-login -d rawlog } ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem ssl_key = </etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem userdb { driver = passwd } deny = yes driver = passwd-file } passdb { args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot.transend driver = passwd-file master = yes } passdb { driver = pam } protocols = imap service imap-login { process_min_avail = 15 service_count = 10 } service imap { executable = imap postlogin process_limit = 2048 } service postlogin { executable = script-login -d rawlog } ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem ssl_key = </etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem userdb { driver = passwd } verbose_proctitle = yes protocol imap { mail_max_userip_connections = 1000 }

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dictionary attack defense
by Cliff Hayes 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

Does dovecot have any dictionary attack defenses yet? In the past I have had to implement defense from outside dovecot, but since dovecot is at the front lines and therefore is the first to know I'm hoping by now there is something we can set. For example, a limit on access failures per minut/hour/day or some such. If not why not?

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authenticate plain, and virtual users
by Eric Abrahamsen 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

I'm running dovecot 2.2.14 on Archlinux. I've been using it with the isync syncing utility for quite some time with no problems, using the LOGIN authentication mechanism. Recently Isync was updated to support PLAIN, and I'm having trouble moving to that. The authenticate string that isync is sending is not the one that dovecot is expecting. I suspect this is because of how I have virtual users set up on my machine. This is a personal laptop, no other users, and so I didn't want to go through the rigmarole of creating more system users just for mail accounts. I also wanted everything stored under my home directory. So my dovecot config looks like this: # 2.2.14: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 3.16.4-1-ARCH i686 auth_verbose = yes disable_plaintext_auth = no info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot-info.log log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log mail_plugins = " fts fts_lucene" passdb { args = username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/passwd driver = passwd-file } plugin { fts = lucene fts_autoindex = yes fts_lucene = whitespace_chars=@. } protocols = imap ssl = no userdb { args = uid=eric gid=users home=/home/eric/.mail/%d/%n username_format=%u default_fields = mail=maildir:/home/eric/.mail/%d/%n/mail driver = static } My /etc/dovecot/passwd looks like this: eric@ericabrahamsen.net:{PLAIN}password1 eric@paper-republic.org:{PLAIN}password2 When isync tries to log into the local dovecot using PLAIN, it sends the base64-encoded version of this string: eric(a)paper-republic.org\0eric\0password2 With my current dovecot config, telnet experimentation shows that dovecot will accept either of these two: \0eric(a)paper-republic.org\0password2 eric@paper-republic.org\0eric@paper-republic.org\0password2 Ie, either with or without the authorization ID, just like it says at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Debugging/Authentication Given that I'm unlikely to be able to change how isync sends the string (and that it's really doing the right thing), are there alterations I can make to my dovecot config to get it to accept the authenticate string that isync is sending? Ideally, can I do that without having to set up system users? I've already tried using the other fields in the passwd file, putting "eric" and "eric(a)paper-republic.org" into the UID fields, just in case. No dice. Thanks in advance for any advice! Eric

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