Hello,
Users can be really good at hanging everybody when you give them enough roope. I spotted a number of problems that I think are of interest to everybody and need mitigation.
# length of path
A busy Windows user wrote enough mail subfolders, and folder names with soo many characters, that exceed Windows maximum path length. To avoid taxing the mail server, their mail client (Thunderbird) is configured to keep a local copy of emails.
I need to enforce a policy on the maximum path length they can create, and the maximum number of characters on any given folder name.
# forbidden characters
Another problem folder names was the presence of white spaces, note the plural, on both the beginning and end of folder names. For example, to emphasize the importance of folders, the user added white spaces in front of names:
Must be at the top Very important A bit less important Normal stuff
And to add insult to injury they wrote spaces at the end of folder names:
This is a folder name with two hidden spaces
I need to enfoce a policy that forbids the use white spaces at the beginning and end of folder names, as well as the use of repeated characters:
____ I spotted your policy and found this new trick
# subfolders, everywhere...
A user confused their IMAP account for a file system and mind map tool, so they created folders everywhere, including root folders at the same level of inbox, draft, junk, trash, and huge directories under inbox.
I need to enforce a policy that allows the creation of folders only under /Archive.
I think such policies make good sense on any dovecot server and should be enforced by default.
On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 07:49:38AM +0000, Rupert Gallagher wrote:
# subfolders, everywhere...
Haha that's me - almost. I have a lot of subfolders, one for each online business/shop that I ever interacted with (and separate email alias for each of them!), some of them sorted into subcategories, one for each person I cared to save emails from/to, one for each mailing list I'm on, separate folders for any official/bureaucratic institution, etc., and quite a few (semi-)temporary folders on top of that. Hey, I've just counted them: 295 at the moment! I have also quite a lot of autosave rules in my sieve scripts. Examples:
Shopping/Electronics/Scheissung_de Shopping/Clothes/GryaznyeNoski_ru Shopping/Other/UselessGizmos_com ... Companies/ACME_com ... People/Joe_F_Random ... Lists/dovecot_org ... Official/Office_For_Socks_Colors ... SPAM/Incoming # spam filter puts them here SPAM/Archive # confirmed spam, for mass-training the filter if needed SPAM/Ham # not really spam, move mails here to retrain the filter SPAM/Spam # really spam, move mails here to retrain the filter SPAM/last_chance # one more and I'll block you at the MTA SPAM/stats # automatic emails with filter stats ... Temp/That_newsletter_I_am_not_sure_is_worth_it Temp/Notifications_I_turned_on_to_see_if_they_are_useful_at_all ... and so on
Fortunately, I am an old Unix/C chap and I HATE whitespace in names, but I use a lot of underscores instead, for good measure :-)
Also fortunately, I am my own admin, so I know what to avoid and if I screw something I may blame myself. And I really get the importance of having LAYOUT=fs on my maildirs!
On the other hand, some users just keep everything in INBOX and their client just marks emails as deleted and never expunges... The cur directories grow and grow... Well, I still have a lot of space on an ext4 FS, so I do not care to educate them yet.
-- Piotr "Malgond" Auksztulewicz firstname@lastname.net
Ping
-------- Original Message -------- On Feb 18, 2021, 08:49, Rupert Gallagher < ruga@protonmail.com> wrote: Hello,
Users can be really good at hanging everybody when you give them enough roope. I spotted a number of problems that I think are of interest to everybody and need mitigation.
# length of path
A busy Windows user wrote enough mail subfolders, and folder names with soo many characters, that exceed Windows maximum path length. To avoid taxing the mail server, their mail client (Thunderbird) is configured to keep a local copy of emails.
I need to enforce a policy on the maximum path length they can create, and the maximum number of characters on any given folder name.
# forbidden characters
Another problem folder names was the presence of white spaces, note the plural, on both the beginning and end of folder names. For example, to emphasize the importance of folders, the user added white spaces in front of names:
Must be at the top Very important A bit less important Normal stuff
And to add insult to injury they wrote spaces at the end of folder names:
This is a folder name with two hidden spaces
I need to enfoce a policy that forbids the use white spaces at the beginning and end of folder names, as well as the use of repeated characters:
____ I spotted your policy and found this new trick
# subfolders, everywhere...
A user confused their IMAP account for a file system and mind map tool, so they created folders everywhere, including root folders at the same level of inbox, draft, junk, trash, and huge directories under inbox.
I need to enforce a policy that allows the creation of folders only under /Archive.
I think such policies make good sense on any dovecot server and should be enforced by default.
participants (2)
-
Piotr Auksztulewicz
-
Rupert Gallagher