SH> On 4/30/2013 1:07 PM, Kyle Wheeler wrote:

...

On Tuesday, April 30 at 08:04 AM, quoth Gregory Sloop:

...

Any ideas where to look next, what I might do to force dovecot to forget message ID's etc - that might force it to read the whole mailbox file again?

Find the dovecot.index files for that mbox and delete them. They will be re-generated from the contents of the mbox.

~Kyle

SH> Apparently Gregory discarded your advice Kyle.

[And you surmise this from what?]

SH> Gregory, this is the first step in fixing such a problem with mbox SH> storage. I've had your same issue and similar occur multiple times, and SH> this normally fixes the problem. Make sure the user in question in SH> logged off and delete the index files as Kyle suggested. When the user SH> logs back in everything should work. If it doesn't delete any cache or SH> sync files on the client MUA (which should have actually been your first SH> step). I've seen this problem with Thunderbird a number of times, SH> though not in a couple of years, since switching to LDA.

This is helpful, and I've already, even before Kyle prompted it, deleted the dovecot indexes.

SH> While you chided Charles for stating the obvious, you'd have done well SH> to have provided what he suggested.

I was looking for general pointers as to where one might productively start. I wasn't berating Charles for not providing an adequate solution. I wasn't asking for specific answers.

Charles, wrote what was, IMO, far too abrasive and demanding, and in a condescending tone that - I *must* *prove* the truth of what I claimed was happening.

Perhaps he didn't mean it the way he said it - I even suspect he didn't. But *prove* is a really strong term. It implies that the user is either being dishonest about something, or is too stupid to know better.

If one doesn't want the questioner to "push-back" against such tone, then it's probably better to use less strident language and suggest things more mildly. [And I see he's doubled-down by attempting to insult me that I don't know how to use grep etc and threatening me of even worse abuse if I post on the postfix list, complaining of my use of reply-all etc.]

If I were to pose such follow-up, I'd say something like... "It's hard to help you without more information. Could you please provide us with X, Y and Z."

Problem solved.

-- As for more detail - postfix IS putting the messages directly into this mbox.

I'm checking the mbox with squirrel-mail which uses Dovecot's IMAP - and I am not aware if SM uses indexes itself or not.

[So I'm not sure if it's a SM problem or a Dovecot problem. It's probably not an mbox problem since mail sees the messages fine and simply looking at the mobx doesn't seem to show any obvious corruption possible.]

• unless there's some corruption in the mbox that's handled badly by dovecot/SM that is handled fine by "mail" - which is certainly

The mailbox is a test mailbox I use on the system, and since I have [and had] some other more pressing issues to attend to, I've yet had time to go much beyond what I'd done before asking for pointers as where to look.

As I get more time in the next day or two, I'll go back and see what more I can gather to determine what the problem is.

-Greg

First - I'm subscribed to the list, please don't reply all and send people two copies of your email.

On 2013-05-01 11:00 AM, Gregory Sloop gregs@sloop.net wrote:

I don't have to shotgun a million lines of logs and other irrelevant data for people here to troll through.

Why would anyone need to troll through a million or more lines of logs?

I said that you needed to provide logs of a problem *transaction* - this inherently means providing *only* the relevant lines of the actual problem transaction.

<sarcasm>You don't know how to use grep/egrep?</sarcasm>

Also, if you don't trust me that the new messages are there from doing a tail on the mbox file, then you certainly shouldn't trust me to actually fix anything either, logs/proof or no.

So this request of "proof" is a bit over the top. <sarcasm> Do I have to get them notarized too? </sarcasm>

Don't be silly, it isn't a personal attack on you, and it isn't about 'trust' in you as an individual, it is about not wasting other people's valuable time chasing wild geese.

Note: don't go on the postfix list asking for help without providing the information I suggested, as they will not be nearly as gentle/kind as I was pointing out the need for it. It is actually a requirement outlined in the welcome message you get when joining their support list (and in my opinion it would be very helpful on this list if the welcome message had a similar requirement):

TO REPORT A PROBLEM see: http://www.postfix.org/DEBUG_README.html#mail

--

Best regards,

Charles