[Dovecot] Mails "invisible" (index corrupted?)
Hi,
I got a complaint from a user today, that a few mails "disappeared" from her Inbox, both when accessing via IMAP with Thunderbird and in the IMAP Webmail client (RoundCube Webmail, caching deactivated).
Searching (in Subject or From header) within the Inbox turned up the missing messages though.
After checking all relevant client settings (filter rules etc.), restarting Thunderbird multiple times, etc., I tried deleting her dovecot.index.cache file, restarting Thunderbird again, but that didn't change anything. Only after deleting dovecot.index.*, everything went back to normal. I can't find anything useful in the log.
Setup: x86, CentOS Linux, dovecot 1.1.1 (current stable binary from ATrpms), maildir storage, mail_debug is turned on
Any hints on what could have caused this? Where to look? I backed up dovecot.index, dovecot.index.cache and dovecot.index.log before I deleted them, but they probably contain sensitive information, so I won't post them to the list.
Thanks, Patrick.
-- STAR Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. http://www.star-group.net/ Phone: +86 (21) 3462 7688 x 826 Fax: +86 (21) 3462 7779
PGP key: https://stshacom1.star-china.net/keys/patrick_nagel.asc Fingerprint: E09A D65E 855F B334 E5C3 5386 EF23 20FC E883 A005
On Wed, 2008-07-16 at 16:43 +0800, Patrick Nagel wrote:
Hi,
I got a complaint from a user today, that a few mails "disappeared" from her Inbox, both when accessing via IMAP with Thunderbird and in the IMAP Webmail client (RoundCube Webmail, caching deactivated).
Searching (in Subject or From header) within the Inbox turned up the missing messages though.
If they're found when searching via Dovecot, then Dovecot sees them..
After checking all relevant client settings (filter rules etc.), restarting Thunderbird multiple times, etc., I tried deleting her dovecot.index.cache file, restarting Thunderbird again, but that didn't change anything. Only after deleting dovecot.index.*, everything went back to normal. I can't find anything useful in the log.
"dovecot.index.*"? Does that mean dovecot.index.log* or also dovecot.index? You did leave dovecot-uidlist alone anyway?
Any hints on what could have caused this? Where to look?
Looking at the actual IMAP traffic would/should have shown what the problem was. For example using rawlog: http://wiki.dovecot.org/Debugging/Rawlog
I backed up dovecot.index, dovecot.index.cache and dovecot.index.log before I deleted them, but they probably contain sensitive information, so I won't post them to the list.
Only dovecot.index.cache contains sensitive information. I could take a look at dovecot.index and dovecot.index.log, but I doubt they show anything useful.
Hi Timo,
thanks for getting back to me :)
On Sunday 20 July 2008, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Wed, 2008-07-16 at 16:43 +0800, Patrick Nagel wrote:
Hi,
I got a complaint from a user today, that a few mails "disappeared" from her Inbox, both when accessing via IMAP with Thunderbird and in the IMAP Webmail client (RoundCube Webmail, caching deactivated).
Searching (in Subject or From header) within the Inbox turned up the missing messages though.
If they're found when searching via Dovecot, then Dovecot sees them..
Yes, searching via dovecot - FTS (Squat) is activated though, if that makes any difference.
After checking all relevant client settings (filter rules etc.), restarting Thunderbird multiple times, etc., I tried deleting her dovecot.index.cache file, restarting Thunderbird again, but that didn't change anything. Only after deleting dovecot.index.*, everything went back to normal. I can't find anything useful in the log.
"dovecot.index.*"? Does that mean dovecot.index.log* or also dovecot.index? You did leave dovecot-uidlist alone anyway?
Excerpts from my bash history file:
tar czf dovecot_metadata.tar.gz dovecot* mv dovecot_metadata.tar.gz .. rm dovecot.index.cache
[then we did some testing, problem still persisted]
tar czf dovecot_metadata2.tar.gz dovecot* mv dovecot_metadata2.tar.gz .. rm dovecot.index* rm dovecot-uidlist
[all mails were visible again]
(so probably deleting dovecot-uidlist solved it?)
Any hints on what could have caused this? Where to look?
Looking at the actual IMAP traffic would/should have shown what the problem was. For example using rawlog: http://wiki.dovecot.org/Debugging/Rawlog
I switched on rawlog for that user now.
I backed up dovecot.index, dovecot.index.cache and dovecot.index.log before I deleted them, but they probably contain sensitive information, so I won't post them to the list.
Only dovecot.index.cache contains sensitive information. I could take a look at dovecot.index and dovecot.index.log, but I doubt they show anything useful.
I have attached dovecot_metadata.tar.gz minus dovecot.index.cache.
Thanks a lot! Patrick.
-- STAR Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. http://www.star-group.net/ Phone: +86 (21) 3462 7688 x 826 Fax: +86 (21) 3462 7779
PGP key: https://stshacom1.star-china.net/keys/patrick_nagel.asc Fingerprint: E09A D65E 855F B334 E5C3 5386 EF23 20FC E883 A005
On Mon, 2008-07-21 at 11:43 +0800, Patrick Nagel wrote:
Searching (in Subject or From header) within the Inbox turned up the missing messages though.
If they're found when searching via Dovecot, then Dovecot sees them..
Yes, searching via dovecot - FTS (Squat) is activated though, if that makes any difference.
Not really.
tar czf dovecot_metadata2.tar.gz dovecot* mv dovecot_metadata2.tar.gz .. rm dovecot.index* rm dovecot-uidlist
[all mails were visible again]
That causes Dovecot to give a new UIDVALIDITY to the mailbox and assign new UIDs to messages.
This really sounds like a client-side caching problem..
I have attached dovecot_metadata.tar.gz minus dovecot.index.cache.
I don't see anything special there, but I guess it would have helped if I also had a list of filenames in cur/ and new/ and also which files contained the missing messages.
participants (2)
-
Patrick Nagel
-
Timo Sirainen