[Dovecot] "Filename keeps changing" issue
Hello,
I have been experiencing a issue for a while with dovecot 1.2.8 :
Dec 4 12:54:00 gen1 dovecot: IMAP(paul): maildir_file_do(/home/paul/Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,): Filename keeps changing Dec 4 12:54:01 gen1 dovecot: IMAP(paul): Disconnected: Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information. [2009-12-04 12:53:59] bytes=4445/26986
So I can't get the messages in this directory neither with Evolution neither with Horde neither with Squirrelmail, but it works with roundcubemail.
How can I debug this ?
dovecot -n
# 1.2.8: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.31-ARCH i686
protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s managesieve
ssl_cert_file: /etc/ssl/certs/ezvan.fr.pem
ssl_key_file: /etc/ssl/private/ezvan.fr.key
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3-login
login_executable(managesieve): /usr/lib/dovecot/managesieve-login
login_process_per_connection: no
mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir
mail_executable(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3
mail_executable(managesieve): /usr/lib/dovecot/managesieve
mail_process_size: 0
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugin_dir(managesieve): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/managesieve
imap_client_workarounds(default): outlook-idle
imap_client_workarounds(imap): outlook-idle
imap_client_workarounds(pop3):
imap_client_workarounds(managesieve):
lda:
postmaster_address: postmaster@ezvan.fr
mail_plugins: sieve
sieve_global_path: /var/sieve/global
auth default:
passdb:
driver: pam
userdb:
driver: passwd
socket:
type: listen
client:
path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-client
mode: 432
master:
path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
mode: 384
plugin:
sieve: ~/.dovecot.sieve
sieve_storage: ~/sieve
Thanks for help !
Paul Ezvan
On Dec 4, 2009, at 6:02 AM, Paul Ezvan wrote:
Dec 4 12:54:00 gen1 dovecot: IMAP(paul): maildir_file_do(/home/paul/Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,): Filename keeps changing
What happens if you try to just cat this file in a shell? Does it always complain about this exact filename or different filenames?
I have a system with currently 121 mail accounts running Dovecot
1.1.20 on Redhat AS4.
The computer has 8 gigabytes of memory, 2 dual core AMD Opteron
processors and is
attached via fiber channel connections to 345 gigabytes of space for
the home directories.
The only purpose for this machine is as an IMAP server and yet several
times throughout
the day the disk utilization on the home directories goes to 100% for
significant periods
of time. I'm using Dovecot because of its reliability and message
indexing features, and I
would expect this system to be way more than what's needed for the
job, but the disk busy
issues bother me, especially with this small number of users.
I'm wondering if the problem here is that all the mailboxes for these
users are in mbox
format and that format just poses too much of a burden on Dovecot. I
personally as an
experiment have been using Maildir format and that seems to work fine.
Would people
on this forum (who probably deal with larger numbers of users and
mailboxes than my
system does) recommend that I switch the mailboxes over to Maildir
format to alleviate
the disk busy problems? Are there any issues to watch out for when
converting mailboxes
from mbox to Maildir format?
On 12/4/2009, Michael Durket (durket@highwire.stanford.edu) wrote:
Would people on this forum (who probably deal with larger numbers of users and mailboxes than my system does) recommend that I switch the mailboxes over to Maildir format to alleviate the disk busy problems? Are there any issues to watch out for when converting mailboxes from mbox to Maildir format?
Absolutely... maildir imho is much better, except maybe for long term archival that is infrequently accessed...
I would also strongly encourage you to uypgrade to 1.2.8...
--
Best regards,
Charles
On Dec 4, 2009, at 8:58 AM, Michael Durket wrote:
I'm wondering if the problem here is that all the mailboxes for these users are in mbox format and that format just poses too much of a burden on Dovecot.
If you haven't yet set mbox_very_dirty_syncs=yes, doing it should help.
I personally as an experiment have been using Maildir format and that seems to work fine. Would people on this forum (who probably deal with larger numbers of users and mailboxes than my system does) recommend that I switch the mailboxes over to Maildir format to alleviate the disk busy problems?
Depends on usage patterns, but I guess it could help. With v1.2 you could also set maildir_very_dirty_syncs=yes to improve its performance.
Are there any issues to watch out for when converting mailboxes from mbox to Maildir format?
Make sure IMAP UIDVALIDITY + UIDs are preserved. Apparently the mb2md.py script in http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration/MailFormat can do it. And do you have POP3 users? Their UIDLs should also be preserved.
Le vendredi 04 décembre 2009 à 07:57 -0600, Timo Sirainen a écrit :
On Dec 4, 2009, at 6:02 AM, Paul Ezvan wrote:
Dec 4 12:54:00 gen1 dovecot: IMAP(paul): maildir_file_do(/home/paul/Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,): Filename keeps changing
What happens if you try to just cat this file in a shell? Does it always complain about this exact filename or different filenames?
It is always the same filename.
cat the file says that it doesn't exist.
When I do "ls Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/" it says "ls: cannot access 1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,: No such file or directory", maybe a filesystem error ?
Paul
Le vendredi 04 décembre 2009 à 16:37 +0100, Frank Elsner a écrit :
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:20:15 +0100 Paul Ezvan wrote:
[ ... ]
When I do "ls Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/" it says "ls: ^
Unquoted blank? Guess it should read
ls Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch\ Linux/cur/--Frank Elsner
To be more precise, it was :
ls "Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/" | head -n 2 ls: ne peut accéder Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type 1224250603.M73441P8724.gen1:2,S 1224250603.M73442P8724.gen1:2,S
Paul
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Fri, 4 Dec 2009, Paul Ezvan wrote:
Dec 4 12:54:00 gen1 dovecot: IMAP(paul): maildir_file_do(/home/paul/Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,): Filename keeps changing
It is always the same filename.
cat the file says that it doesn't exist.
When I do "ls Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/" it says "ls: cannot access 1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,: No such file or directory", maybe a filesystem error ?
On Fri, 4 Dec 2009, Paul Ezvan wrote:
ls "Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/" | head -n 2 ls: ne peut accéder Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type 1224250603.M73441P8724.gen1:2,S 1224250603.M73442P8724.gen1:2,S
Er, I don't get it, you issue
ls "Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/"
and you get the error:
ls: ne peut accéder Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/1224250603.M73770P8724.gen0:2,: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
(you've translated into in the other post: no such file or directory)
??
If so, I would:
a) check for dangling symlinks, b) check for funny characters in the name ".Travail.Linux.Arch Linux", e.g. line break, tab, ... c) umount / mount the file system if remote, to reset the internal cache d) make a file system check
Otherwise, I suppose you should chdir into "Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/" and perform ls -ld 1224250603.M73770P8724* Because Timo's usually very descriptive error messages would lead me to think that the directory entry is either not accessable, but visible (e.g. dangling symlink, read ACL* but no rename ACL, or some other restriction), or that indeed there is such entry, but something is causing it to change some attribute, like keyword, state, etc. everytime, e.g. by by two simultaneous connections.
- With ACL I mean something other than plain Unix permissions, like POSIX ACL, AFS perms, NFS readonly, mandatory locks, SELinux, AppArmor, .... .
Bye,
Steffen Kaiser -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
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Le 07/12/2009 13:42, Steffen Kaiser a écrit :
[...] If so, I would:
a) check for dangling symlinks, b) check for funny characters in the name ".Travail.Linux.Arch Linux", e.g. line break, tab, ... c) umount / mount the file system if remote, to reset the internal cache d) make a file system check [...] Thanks for your help, a filesystem check solved the problem.
Paul
On 12/4/2009, Paul Ezvan (paul@ezvan.fr) wrote:
cat the file says that it doesn't exist.
When I do "ls Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/"
For the record, he said cat the file, not ls the file... but if it isn't there, you probably couldn't cat it either... ;)
Le vendredi 04 décembre 2009 à 11:37 -0500, Charles Marcus a écrit :
On 12/4/2009, Paul Ezvan (paul@ezvan.fr) wrote:
cat the file says that it doesn't exist.
When I do "ls Maildir/.Travail.Linux.Arch Linux/cur/"
For the record, he said cat the file, not ls the file... but if it isn't there, you probably couldn't cat it either... ;)
Yes but usually when you ls a directory it doesn't say "foo.bar doesn't exist" at the beginning, so this strange behaviour may be related to my issue.
Paul
participants (6)
-
Charles Marcus
-
Frank Elsner
-
Michael Durket
-
Paul Ezvan
-
Steffen Kaiser
-
Timo Sirainen