[Dovecot] Deleting Index Files and Expire Tool
Hi,
In order to periodically deal with corrupted index files in Dovecot, we routinely will remove a users .imap folder in order to have the indexes rebuild. This hasn't ever caused a problem previously. However, removing the user's index files seems to break the ability of the expire plugin to update the expire stamp correctly, or expunge mail from the user folder. This seems logical, with the reliance of expire on the index.cache files. In testing, actually emptying the trash (since we're only concerned about Trash folders) resets the mailbox to a degree that the expire tool functions properly again.
My question is, is there a better way to handle corrupted cache files? Is there a more graceful way to rebuild these using Dovecot tools? Or is there a more specific index file that can be removed, rather than removing the entire hierarchy?
We're using Dovecot 1.1.6, on Solaris 10.
-- Tom Goerger University of Minnesota - Internet Services
On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 11:26 -0500, Tom Goerger wrote:
My question is, is there a better way to handle corrupted cache files? Is there a more graceful way to rebuild these using Dovecot tools? Or is there a more specific index file that can be removed, rather than removing the entire hierarchy?
We're using Dovecot 1.1.6, on Solaris 10.
My guess is that simply upgrading to latest stable version would help. What kind of cache corruption errors have you had? Apparently mbox still has some problem with message sizes, but that should at least nowadays be fixed automatically.
We will likely do that at some point in the near future. I've done some testing with this issue in 1.1.17 as well, however this issue is not solved here. At this point, I'm less concerned with the reasons why any cache corruption issues might be occurring and more concerned with getting these folders back to a usable state. Might there be any way of resetting a folder in the manner that an "Empty Trash" option would, without actually expunging any messages? I know that we're running a very outdated version of the software, but we're dealing with some political roadblocks in our environment to actually get this upgraded, and I have to work with what we have for the time being. We can limit removing these indexes as much as we can, but I'm sure there are users out there whose indexes have already been removed, and I'm concerned about the expire tool working for them.
Thanks,
Tom
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Timo Sirainen <tss@iki.fi> wrote:
On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 11:26 -0500, Tom Goerger wrote:
My question is, is there a better way to handle corrupted cache files? Is there a more graceful way to rebuild these using Dovecot tools? Or is there a more specific index file that can be removed, rather than removing the entire hierarchy?
We're using Dovecot 1.1.6, on Solaris 10.
My guess is that simply upgrading to latest stable version would help. What kind of cache corruption errors have you had? Apparently mbox still has some problem with message sizes, but that should at least nowadays be fixed automatically.
-- Tom Goerger University of Minnesota - Internet Services
In theory Dovecot should fix indexes if it ever finds anything wrong with them. If that doesn't work, then you need to delete them manually. I don't really have any other good ideas.
On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 13:58 -0500, Tom Goerger wrote:
We will likely do that at some point in the near future. I've done some testing with this issue in 1.1.17 as well, however this issue is not solved here. At this point, I'm less concerned with the reasons why any cache corruption issues might be occurring and more concerned with getting these folders back to a usable state. Might there be any way of resetting a folder in the manner that an "Empty Trash" option would, without actually expunging any messages? I know that we're running a very outdated version of the software, but we're dealing with some political roadblocks in our environment to actually get this upgraded, and I have to work with what we have for the time being. We can limit removing these indexes as much as we can, but I'm sure there are users out there whose indexes have already been removed, and I'm concerned about the expire tool working for them.
Thanks,
Tom
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Timo Sirainen <tss@iki.fi> wrote:
On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 11:26 -0500, Tom Goerger wrote:
My question is, is there a better way to handle corrupted cache files? Is there a more graceful way to rebuild these using Dovecot tools? Or is there a more specific index file that can be removed, rather than removing the entire hierarchy?
We're using Dovecot 1.1.6, on Solaris 10.
My guess is that simply upgrading to latest stable version would help. What kind of cache corruption errors have you had? Apparently mbox still has some problem with message sizes, but that should at least nowadays be fixed automatically.
participants (2)
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Timo Sirainen
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Tom Goerger