[Dovecot] Dovecot strange behaviors on Solaris
Folks -
I've been using Dovecot for some time now, but have only recently upgraded to 1.0alpha4. I'm struggling to get my configuration right and I'm seeing some truly bizarre issues.
My Setup: Solaris 2.8 / Thunderbird / Procmail / Dovecot 1.0alpha4
My mail setup is only for me, so Dovecot runs at an odd port and under my userID. All my mail is in my home directory, which is on NFS (NetApp). The main mail receiver is a different machine which mounts my home directory.
Typical entry from .procmailrc:
:0
- ^(From|To|CC):.*@.*\
Highlights from dovecot.conf:
#default_mail_env = maildir:%h/.mail/Maildir:INDEX=/var/tmp/mario/dovecot default_mail_env = maildir:%h/.mail/Maildir:INDEX=MEMORY
mmap_disable = yes
#lock_method = flock lock_method = fcntl #lock_method = dotlock
protocol imap { listen = *:2143 }
auth_worker_max_count = 0
auth default { mechanisms = plain userdb passwd { } }
When I run as above (INDEX=MEMORY), I have access to all my mail, but I'm seeing literally thousands of .nfs files created all throughout my .mail/Maildir directories, and Thunderbird periodically locks up. As the filesystem fills with useless .nfs files (I deleted 10000 from ONE mailbox directory this morning), everything gets really, really slow, and I suspect this contributes to Thunder bird's problem.
But, if I run with the INDEX on a local disk, many mailboxes will not load (the most critical ones, of course...), but also some do. My inbox will list messages, but cannot display any. Others won't even list messages.
I'm at a total loss how to proceed, here. I've tried everything I can think of to debug what's going on, but have gotten nowhere (well, I did discover the whole lock_method=fcntl trick).
I've tried enabling rawlog, but am just not familiar enough with IMAP to get help from those logs.
Here's what's happening in a typical mailbox:
% pwd /home/mario/.mail/Maildir/.SI2 % ls -al total 544 drwx--S--- 5 rvvk40 lowv 425984 Dec 2 14:42 ./ drwx--S--- 64 rvvk40 lowv 16384 Dec 2 14:43 ../ -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 15 Nov 16 07:16 .customflags -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 24 Dec 2 14:38 .nfs00986 -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 24 Dec 2 14:40 .nfs08986 -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 312 Dec 2 14:11 .nfs16686 -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 24 Dec 2 14:32 .nfs1A886
-- 40+ deleted here for brevity --
-rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 24 Dec 2 14:39 .nfsE3986 -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 312 Dec 2 14:38 .nfsEF886 -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 24 Dec 2 14:26 .nfsF3886 -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 312 Dec 2 14:32 .nfsF9886 -rw------- 1 rvvk40 lowv 312 Dec 2 14:17 .nfsFF686 drwx--S--- 2 rvvk40 lowv 4096 Dec 2 07:58 cur/ drwx--S--- 2 rvvk40 lowv 4096 Dec 2 07:58 new/ drwx--S--- 2 rvvk40 lowv 4096 Dec 2 07:58 tmp/ % pwd /home/mario/.mail/Maildir/.SI2
Help!
MarioOn Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 03:04:17PM -0700, Mario Nigrovic-rvvk40 wrote:
Typical entry from .procmailrc:
:0
- ^(From|To|CC):.*@.*\
The :0 means procmail won't be using locking for this mailbox (which is perfectly fine, for Maildir), however:
#lock_method = flock lock_method = fcntl
Here you tell dovecot to use fcntl for locking. fcntl over NFS might work (depending on the client and server, and IIRC NetApp at least tries to do it right) but it has some fundamental flaws (NFS is stateless, locking obviously is not) so I would highly recommend you switch to dotlock, instead. In any case, it's the most reliable lock method over NFS. Since procmail won't be locking, you're only guarding against multiple instances of dovecot, which should all be using dotlock.
(Procmail can also use dotlocking if you want, but it uses a compile-time test to see which lock method it should use.)
#lock_method = dotlock
protocol imap { listen = *:2143 }
When I run as above (INDEX=MEMORY), I have access to all my mail, but I'm seeing literally thousands of .nfs files created all throughout my .mail/Maildir directories, and Thunderbird periodically locks up. As the filesystem fills with useless .nfs files (I deleted 10000 from ONE mailbox directory this morning), everything gets really, really slow, and I suspect this contributes to Thunder bird's problem.
.nfs* files are a hack used to deal with state (open files, quite likely your lockfiles) over the stateless NFS protocol.
But, if I run with the INDEX on a local disk, many mailboxes will not load (the most critical ones, of course...), but also some do. My inbox will list messages, but cannot display any. Others won't even list messages.
I'm not sure why a local index wouldn't work. It worked fine for us for a while, until we had too many users to be able to deal with the occasional index corruption. You may also want to place the control files on a local disk, by the way, since only dovecot uses them. Unless you have multiple servers that run dovecot, of course. Using local controlfiles may also relieve your locking woes, without switching locking mechanism (although dotlock also works fine for local filesystems.)
-- Thomas Wouters thomas@xs4all.net
Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!
participants (2)
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Mario Nigrovic-rvvk40
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Thomas Wouters