[Dovecot] mailbox corruption
Hello,
Here is the description of a problem we habe been having for some time. Originally posted on the postfix-users mailing list, but no solution found to date.
We have been having problems with our mail system for a couple of months. Every now and then, some mailboxes get corrupted: a half-truncated message, usually without headers, is at the beginning of the mailbox, causing it to become unaccessible.
For information, we use:
- fedora core 4
- postfix-2.2.2-2 rpm
- dovecot-0.99.14-4.fc4 rpm
- mailscanner-4.36.4-1 rpm
This ^^^^^^^^^^ is probably your problem.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame mailscanner. I have fc4, postfix rpm and dovecot. Nothing else and I get the same corruption he is talking about.
Ok, I removed MailScanner and I still have the very same problem. Locking _does_ work for postfix and dovecot (discussed with Wietse, partly by mail).
Any idea? As an alternative, is there a way of handling the problem better? Dovecot just locks on these corrupt mailboxes :-/ I didn't try Dovecot 1.0, as it is alpha and I don't have any package for that anyway (production system :-/ ).
Thank you,
--
Yannick Majoros http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros Informaticien AUTO-INMA/FSA/UCL
CSAM 4, avenue G. Lemaître B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve Belgium Tel: +32-10-47.80.10 Fax: +32-10-47.21.80 #JAPH : http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros/japh.txt Si vous avez des problèmes pour afficher ce message (accents qui ne passent pas, signature électronique, ...) votre système de mail n'est pas conforme aux standards, voir http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros/email.html
Yannick Majoros:
Hello,
Here is the description of a problem we habe been having for some time. Originally posted on the postfix-users mailing list, but no solution found to date.
We have been having problems with our mail system for a couple of months. Every now and then, some mailboxes get corrupted: a half-truncated message, usually without headers, is at the beginning of the mailbox, causing it to become unaccessible.
For information, we use:
- fedora core 4
- postfix-2.2.2-2 rpm
- dovecot-0.99.14-4.fc4 rpm
- mailscanner-4.36.4-1 rpm ...
Ok, I removed MailScanner and I still have the very same problem. Locking _does_ work for postfix and dovecot (discussed with Wietse, partly by mail).
Any idea? As an alternative, is there a way of handling the problem better? Dovecot just locks on these corrupt mailboxes :-/ I didn't try Dovecot 1.0, as it is alpha and I don't have any package for that anyway (production system :-/ ).
What else is accessing the mailbox files? Any scripts running around that access mail without proper file locking, like scripts that replicate mail to another box?
Whay file system is being used?
If you can't figure out which is broken, then you'll have to use maildir files.
WietseWietse Venema wrote:
Yannick Majoros:
Hello,
Here is the description of a problem we habe been having for some time. Originally posted on the postfix-users mailing list, but no solution found to date.
We have been having problems with our mail system for a couple of months. Every now and then, some mailboxes get corrupted: a half-truncated message, usually without headers, is at the beginning of the mailbox, causing it to become unaccessible.
For information, we use:
- fedora core 4
- postfix-2.2.2-2 rpm
- dovecot-0.99.14-4.fc4 rpm
- mailscanner-4.36.4-1 rpm
...
Ok, I removed MailScanner and I still have the very same problem. Locking _does_ work for postfix and dovecot (discussed with Wietse, partly by mail).
Any idea? As an alternative, is there a way of handling the problem better? Dovecot just locks on these corrupt mailboxes :-/ I didn't try Dovecot 1.0, as it is alpha and I don't have any package for that anyway (production system :-/ ).
What else is accessing the mailbox files? Any scripts running around that access mail without proper file locking, like scripts that replicate mail to another box?
Whay file system is being used?
If you can't figure out which is broken, then you'll have to use maildir files.
Wietse
No scripts. If amavisd-new is safe, then nothing else should access mailboxes. Only via dovecot POP3/IMAP. Do you think it is worth to go for maildirs? Would the transition be easy enough to be sure that it won't be worst ?
Thank you,
--
Yannick Majoros http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros Informaticien AUTO-INMA/FSA/UCL
CSAM 4, avenue G. Lemaître B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve Belgium Tel: +32-10-47.80.10 Fax: +32-10-47.21.80 #JAPH : http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros/japh.txt Si vous avez des problèmes pour afficher ce message (accents qui ne passent pas, signature électronique, ...) votre système de mail n'est pas conforme aux standards, voir http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros/email.html
On Wednesday 14 Sep 2005 1:13 pm, Yannick Majoros wrote:
If you can't figure out which is broken, then you'll have to use maildir files.
Do you think it is worth to go for maildirs? Would the transition be easy enough to be sure that it won't be worst ?
As someone on both lists, whilst I've used dovecot with mbox on one server with only a couple of glitches in about 1 year (always in the Trash folder - guess it is a hot folder), I would always choose to deploy dovecot with maildir. Indeed I see no reason to use mbox any more - I think well and truely obselete.
The exception was where I needed to move just one user (of many) to IMAP4, on a box with POP3 and mbox format mail already happily in use. This server will be replaced when I'm back from my holidays, and the replacement will use maildir for everyone.
Can't vouch for big transitions from one to other, but there are a lot of stories and howtos out there.
participants (3)
-
Simon Waters
-
wietse＠porcupine.org
-
Yannick Majoros