January 2007 - dovecot

[Dovecot] Changing the Seen Flags
by Amardeep Singh 14 Feb '07

14 Feb '07

Hi , Can we change the setting on dovecot so that the Seen mail flag S should be saved where everybody can see that and not in the dovecot.index file As we are facing problems with public folder read/unread mails. Any help is appreciated Thanks, Amardeep

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[Dovecot] environment variables required for startup
by Marshal Newrock 14 Feb '07

14 Feb '07

Using dovecot-1.0-rc19 (quotas are working good, btw) on Gentoo, I have a strange problem. On boot, dovecot doesn't start, the init script just times out. From the command line, it starts instantly without problem. Also, using a program called 'monit' to make sure processes stay running and restart them if they stop, if I manually stop dovecot, it is then unable to start it (calling the init script). Nothing gets logged. In all cases, it's "/etc/init.d/dovecot start". The only thing I can think of is that there's some environment variable required which isn't being set. monit specifically says it unsets everything except for a basic path before running the start program. Do any environment variables need to be set in order for dovecot to start successfully? -- Marshal Newrock Ideal Solution, LLC - http://www.idealso.com

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[Dovecot] Ubuntu, Exim, deliver: permissions/setgid problem
by Sam Hathaway 14 Feb '07

14 Feb '07

Hello all, I have a little problem. I'm trying to set up Dovecot deliver (1.0 beta 3) as the LDA for Exim4 on Ubuntu 6.06 with MBOX, and I'm running into permissions problems. Exim typically wants to run pipes as the user to whom the mail is being delivered (as per the "check_local_user"). deliver needs access to the auth socket and needs to be able to create files in /var/mail. In Ubuntu, /var/mail is writeable by group mail, but not by others. So I thought I'd make deliver run as the user to whom the mail is being delivered (as per default) and with group "mail" (so it can create files in /var/mail). I also set the auth socket to be group-writeable and gave it the group mail. So theoretically, deliver should be able to: - connect to the socket - create dotfiles in /var/mail - write to the user's mailbox The problem I'm running into is that deliver tries to setgid to the primary group of the target user, and dies when it can't. I specifically do NOT want it to do this, because regular users don't have permission to write to /var/mail. I've also tried making deliver SUID root (as recommended on this list) or SGID mail (like procmail is) but I get the same error. If I also disable the "group = mail" line in the dovecot_deliver_user router in exim4.conf, I still get the same error. If I disable the "group = mail" line without making deliver SUID or SGID, then it can no longer connect to the auth socket. In this case it runs with the group of the user for whom the mail is being delivered, i.e. sam-adm (#10000). I've also tried adding "user = mail" to the transport, to no avail. The ONE way I've been able to make it work is to remove "group = mail" from exim4.conf and set the socket's mode to 0666, but I've seen warnings that allowing world-access to the socket is dangerous. I'm actually not sure why this works, since in this case it's running with both the UID and GID of the target user, and therefore shouldn't be able to create files in /var/mail. Can anyone untangle this for me? From what I've read, in Debian delivery agents should run with group "mail" (procmail is SGID mail). It seems to me that the way to go is to spawn it with group mail, allow group mail access to the auth socket, and be done with it. But this is prevented from working since it insists on resetting back to the user's primary group. Thanks, Sam Hathaway The relevent section of my dovecot.conf looks like this: protocol lda { postmaster_address = postmaster(a)uofr.net log_path = /var/log/dovecot-lda.log } auth default { mechanisms = plain socket listen { master { path = /var/run/dovecot-auth-master mode = 0660 group = mail } } # ... (other auth config directives here) } And the relevent parts of my exim4.conf are as follows: # in router section: local_user: debug_print = "R: local_user for $local_part@$domain" driver = accept domains = +local_domains check_local_user local_part_suffix = +* local_part_suffix_optional local_parts = ! root transport = dovecot_deliver_user # in transport section: dovecot_deliver_user: debug_print = "T: pipe for $local_part@$domain" driver = pipe command = /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver -d $local_part message_prefix = message_suffix = log_output delivery_date_add envelope_to_add return_path_add group = mail Here are the permissions on some interesting files/dirs: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root mail 551424 2006-11-22 21:59 /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver drwxrwsr-t 2 root mail 1024 2007-01-25 14:14 /var/mail -rw-rw---- 1 sam-adm mail 544 2007-01-25 15:58 /var/mail/sam-adm srw-rw---- 1 root mail 0 2007-01-25 15:39 /var/run/dovecot-auth-master And here's how I've been testing: echo "test" | mail -s "deliver test" sam-adm When I execute the above command, exim says: 2007-01-25 15:55:01 1HABcb-0006h4-N8 <= sam-adm(a)vps.uofr.net U=sam-adm P=local S=334 2007-01-25 15:55:02 1HABcb-0006h4-N8 ** sam-adm(a)vps.uofr.net R=local_user T=dovecot_deliver_user: Child process of dovecot_deliver_user transport returned 89 from command: /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver 2007-01-25 15:55:02 1HABcb-0006h4-N8 Completed And deliver says: deliver: "2007-01-25 15:55:02 "Fatal: setgid(10000) failed: Operation not permitted

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[Dovecot] Shared folders plans for the future
by Timo Sirainen 11 Feb '07

11 Feb '07

So while driving for several hours in my car recently and having nothing else to do, I started thinking how they could be done. I think the "public folders" configuration will stay as it is now. Does it really even need anything else? The problematic case is how the users can share their mailboxes to other users. There are two problems related to it: 1) How to get (quickly) a list of another user's mailboxes that I have access to? 2) How to get quickly a list of all users who have mailboxes that I have access to? The 1) problem is easier to solve. Create a directory listing all the mailboxes that are shared to at least someone (have ACLs set). It could be configured like: namespace shared { # IMAP namespace prefix, %u expands to shared user prefix = user/%u/ # Directory containing symlinks to user's all shared mailboxes share_dir = ~/Maildir/shared # Where to store indexes for other users' accessed mailboxes index_dir = ~/Maildir/others-indexes } The ~/Maildir/shared directory could then contain symlinks to all the shared mailboxes. The directory list could probably be in Maildir++ layout even though the symlinks would point to mboxes. This requires adding code that can handle mixed maildir/mbox directories, but it'll come anyway.. The 2) problem is more difficult. There are 3 choices: a) Use a shared database file. lib-dict could be used for this, so the database could be in SQL or in a berkeley db file. The downside to this is that the file needs to be readable and writable to everyone, so if users have shell access the users could break the file. They dictionary would contain data in format "<destination_user>/<sharing_user>" = 1 and "<destination_group>/<sharing_user>" = 1, ie. the value would be ignored and only the existence of the keys would be important. Then iterating through "<my_username>/*" and "<all_my_groups>/*" would list the users who probably have mailboxes where I have access to. b) Use a directories with sticky bit set. Well, basically the same idea as in a), except filesystem would be used. Actually perhaps this could be made another lib-dict backend.. c) Brute force: Just assume everyone potentially have shared mailboxes. Get the list of users by readdir()ing through /home (configurable). I guess each of these could be made an option.. So something like: namespace shared { .. # a) shared_dict = db:/var/lib/dovecot/shared-mailboxes.db # b) shared_dict = dir:/var/lib/dovecot/shared-mailboxes # c) shared_dict = bruteforce:/home } I'm currently also implementing a "mailbox list index", which contains a list of all the user's mailboxes and some useful metadata for them, such as number of messages and so on. So that STATUS command wouldn't need to open the mailbox index files if they haven't changed. The mailbox list index updating is normally done when directory's mtime has changed. For list of shared users that would also work in 2b) and 2c) cases, but for 2a) I'd either have to always sync everything or alternatively add some sequence/<dest_user/group>=# value which is grown for each update, and the syncing is done only when the sequence is updated.

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[Dovecot] duplicate emails
by Alex 07 Feb '07

07 Feb '07

i'm working with dovecot-1.0.rc15 I have receive a lot of duplicate emails with microsoft outlook, i don't have this problem with outlook express This is in pop3

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[Dovecot] a namespace "mbox" without an INBOX
by David Bonnafous 05 Feb '07

05 Feb '07

hi, (dovecot 1.0r15) I try to setup up two namespaces: 1- the first one (and default one) a maildir namespace 2- the second one a mbox namespace I want only one "INBOX", in the maildir namespace, no INBOX in the mbox namespace. I get what I want with this configuration: ---------------------------------------- mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir namespace private { inbox = yes } namespace private { separator = . prefix = mbox. location = mbox:~/mbox:INBOX= inbox = no hidden = no } ---------------------------------------- My question is: is it a normal way to do what I want ? I mean, the line location = mbox:~/mbox:INBOX= looks odd. I try with just the line inbox=no (without INBOX=) but dovecot set a default INBOX that disturbs some mail client. yours, -- David Bonnafous Institut de Mathématiques Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse - France

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[Dovecot] Large & busy site, NFS with deliver only servers
by Dean Manners 05 Feb '07

05 Feb '07

Timo / Others, I have been working on a new installation for a fairly busy site, and after many weeks of tribulation have come to an architecture Im happy with: 2x Debian (2.6.18) - MXing machines running Postfix / MailScanner / Dovecot-LDA (A slightly patched RC17 for prettier Quota bounces) 2x Debian (2.6.18) - Mail retrieval machines running Dovecot IMAP/POP3 (Currently RC17) 3x Node Isilon NFS cluster (NetApp type devices) I chose Dovecot-LDA over Postfix-Virtual / Maildrop / Procmail due to its hassle free auto creation of new user maildirs, and the funkyness of built in Sieve functionality. The on the fly indexing sounded like a bonus at the time. However as Im sure all people who stress test with index's stored over NFS find, index locking makes for some 'spectacular crashes' (see others previous posts). I have tried out the recommended mount options and locking methods to no avail. Once under some stress, say ~60 messages a minute from the two front end machines, understandably the index's get pickled instantly. So as a hack way around the index locking problems, I have configured the MXing machines to index locally to no where (/tmp) - and deal with the very slightly slower IMAP/POP3 performance on the retrieval side. Is there way to tell/patch Dovecot-LDA not to bother with indexing? So Im not creating unused index files. Cheers __________________________________________ Dean Manners

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[Dovecot] Quota crashing w/ gdb backtrace
by Dean Brooks 05 Feb '07

05 Feb '07

Hi, I'm still running into consistent crashing when moving files between folders when dirsize quotas are enabled. This is running Dovecot1.0rc19. Please let me know if I'm posting this to the wrong list. Here is the gdb backtrace: #0 0x377fc in mbox_file_seek (mbox=0xc8560, view=0xc94c0, seq=1, deleted_r=0xffbef157) at mbox-file.c:167 167 if (data == NULL) { (gdb) bt #0 0x377fc in mbox_file_seek (mbox=0xc8560, view=0xc94c0, seq=1, deleted_r=0xffbef157) at mbox-file.c:167 #1 0x39684 in mbox_mail_seek (mail=0xc73a8) at mbox-mail.c:69 #2 0x398f0 in mbox_mail_get_physical_size (_mail=0xc73a8) at mbox-mail.c:163 #3 0x6b880 in mail_get_physical_size (mail=0xc73a8) at mail.c:75 #4 0x7f933a74 in quota_default_try_alloc (ctx=0xc9a58, mail=0xc73a8, too_large_r=0xffbef397) at quota.c:434 #5 0x7f933654 in quota_try_alloc (ctx=0x0, mail=0xc73a8, too_large_r=0xffbef397) at quota.c:301 #6 0x7f9370c8 in quota_check (t=0xc57f0, mail=0xc73a8) at quota-storage.c:120 #7 0x7f9374d0 in quota_save_finish (ctx=0xc7790, dest_mail=0xc73a8) at quota-storage.c:222 #8 0x6cb64 in mailbox_save_finish (_ctx=0xffbef504, dest_mail=0xc73a8) at mail-storage.c:538 #9 0x6ba2c in mail_storage_copy (t=0xc57f0, mail=0xc5c00, flags=MAIL_SEEN, keywords=0x0, dest_mail=0xc73a8) at mail-copy.c:38 #10 0x7f9371e4 in quota_copy (t=0xc57f0, mail=0xc5c00, flags=MAIL_SEEN, keywords=0x0, dest_mail=0x0) at quota-storage.c:148 #11 0x6cbbc in mailbox_copy (t=0xc57f0, mail=0xc5c00, flags=MAIL_SEEN, keywords=0x0, dest_mail=0x0) at mail-storage.c:553 #12 0x1e6b0 in fetch_and_copy (t=0xc57f0, srcbox=0xc57f0, search_args=0x8) at cmd-copy.c:34 #13 0x1e804 in cmd_copy (cmd=0xba6c4) at cmd-copy.c:95 #14 0x21eec in cmd_uid (cmd=0xba6c4) at cmd-uid.c:19 #15 0x22ab8 in client_handle_input (cmd=0xba6c4) at client.c:331 #16 0x22a3c in client_handle_input (cmd=0xba6c4) at client.c:388 #17 0x22bb0 in _client_input (context=0xba680) at client.c:428 #18 0x80e88 in io_loop_handler_run (ioloop=0xb7de8) at ioloop-poll.c:199 #19 0x80794 in io_loop_run (ioloop=0xb7de8) at ioloop.c:281 #20 0x2b3d0 in main (argc=0, argv=0xffbefa7c, envp=0xffbefa8c) at main.c:280 The "data" variable defined as: (gdb) print data $1 = (void *) 0xd9354 (gdb) print &data $3 = (void **) 0xffbef0dc I've noticed that the copy (during a move) *does* complete correctly. However, the original files never gets deleted, so I assume that this crash is occuring during the deletion in the original folder. -- Dean Brooks dean(a)iglou.com

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[Dovecot] Dovecot Wiki: Orphaned page on mbox locking
by Jim Garrison 05 Feb '07

05 Feb '07

The following shows up in the "orphaned page" list of the Wiki: http://wiki.dovecot.org/MboxLocking?action=show&redirect=MboxSoftwareLocks Does the description of Dovecot mbox locking still apply to current versions? If yes, it should be linked from the "Troubleshooting" page. -- Jim Garrison (jhg(a)acm.org) PGP Keys at http://www.jhmg.net RSA 0x04B73B7F DH 0x70738D88

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[Dovecot] get username in pop3s
by Maria de los Angeles Cifuentes 05 Feb '07

05 Feb '07

Dear friends: I need to get the username after authenticate user in a ldap database but I don't know where i must modificate de source code. Please help me. Regards Maria de los Angeles.

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