- dovecot - dovecot.org

RE: [Dovecot] mbox folders
by Villalovos, John L 19 May '04

19 May '04

dovecot-bounces(a)dovecot.org wrote: > No, he means in your dovecot.conf file Oh. Oops :) Initially I had nothing. And then went with the following: #default_mail_env = default_mail_env = mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u John -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

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RE: [Dovecot] mbox folders
by Villalovos, John L 19 May '04

19 May '04

dovecot-bounces(a)dovecot.org wrote: > * Villalovos, John L <john.l.villalovos(a)intel.com> (20040518 13:46): >> The problem I am having is that it seems to want to put folders in: >> >> ~/mail/mail/ > > How is your `default_mail_env' variable configured? I have: [john@webhost john]$ set | grep -i mail MAIL=/var/spool/mail/john MAILCHECK=60 [john@webhost john]$ John -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

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[Dovecot] having hell of the time converting away from UW
by Eric S. Johansson 18 May '04

18 May '04

I just want to check and make sure not missing anything. I'm trying to convert a customer away from UW. unfortunately, all of the mailboxes are in MBX format (my own mistake coming back to haunt me). mailutil doesn't seem to do conversions properly. It keeps complaining about an existing copy of /mbox and only if I say to -merge append will the copy proceed. mailsync doesn't work well with hierarchies of mailboxes. its copies the top level mailboxes but proceeds to get sick on the sub mailboxes. I'm not sure what other tools there are to help me get out from the mbx rathole and over to the maildir wallow. any suggestions?

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[Dovecot] dovecot (mutt?) tells me I have new email (when I don't)
by Charlie Allom 18 May '04

18 May '04

Hi, does anyone else, whilst using mutt, have the problem where you read your new email - then change to another mailbox, *then* mutt tells you that you have new email in the mailbox you just read!? It seems to only happen when I: a) receive email in, say, =mi b) change to, and read email in =mi c) hit 'c' to change to next-unread mailbox d) mutt says "New mail in imap://yeled@localhost/" e) I 'c' back there to =mi and there is no New email - but there are some Old 'unread' emails (ie "O" status in mutt) I've attached the IMAP logs. Of special note is the RECENT after the thread 'a1192' in the file 203.018.243.123.00143-203.031.232.002.57 a1192 OK Status completed. * STATUS "mi" (RECENT 1) a1193 OK Status completed. I believe it's telling mutt that there is a new email in "mi" after I've just read it! a1184 OK Status completed. * 890 FETCH (UID 901 BODY[] {3661} ^^this is the email I just read, and is now "New" again. Subject: test2 Is this a mutt or dovecot bug/feature? Regards, C. -- charlie(a)rubberduck.com - Melbourne, Australia http://rubberduck.com/~yeled/ PGP: 0x14AA7941 || finger yeled(a)lazy.spodder.com

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[Dovecot] maildirsize
by Brian Candler 17 May '04

17 May '04

Hello, Are there plans to implement Maildir++ quotas (maildirsize) in dovecot in the near future? Also - how do things work if you have multiple dovecot frontends accessing an NFS mailstore? If you keep the index files on local disk, and clients connect alternately to different machines, are the stale indexes noticed and corrected? Thanks, Brian.

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[Dovecot] Dovecot vs. Courier-Imap
by Marten Lehmann 17 May '04

17 May '04

Hello, I've heard of both and I already tested and installed both, but I'm not sure which one is better, since both just seem to work and I can't see a difference, except from the point how it's set up and configured. Where are the drawbacks of each one, where are the benefits? I also tested cyrus before, but cyrus is not working well with maildirs. I'm not that into detail of both projects, maybe you can explain a bit. Thanks in advance for every answer! Regards Marten

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[Dovecot] 1.0-test9 released
by Timo Sirainen 17 May '04

17 May '04

http://dovecot.org/test/ - SORT command always replied with NO - Locking fixes. Fixes several crashes, dotlock errors and deadlock errors - When multiple sessions were concurrently modifying mailbox it often mixed up the messages that were supposed to be modified. When expunging it also gave errors such as: Corrupted transaction log file /home/user/Maildir/.INBOX/dovecot.index.log: Expunge range 5..5: UIDs 6..6 doesn't match real UIDs 18..18 Now it doesn't do it as often, but it still does.. I'm not really sure where the bug is. Have to keep looking. This seems much more stable than test8, but because of the above problem I still don't recommend it for more than testing.

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[Dovecot] local auth
by Kees Cook 15 May '04

15 May '04

Is there a way to run dovecot locally as a user, like uw-imap lets you do? I want to use dovecot with fetchmail over ssh... I couldn't find anything in the archives on this. -- Kees Cook @outflux.net

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[Dovecot] can I share IMAP folders for multiple user
by Hitao 14 May '04

14 May '04

Hi, Dear all, Just a bit curious, could I configure dovecot for two users share the access to certain IMAP folders in the mailbox? I searched the list archive and only found http://dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2004-April/003236.html and http://dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2004-April/003168.html, but I am not sure is this the same thing that I want and where could I find more details? Wish you a nice day! Hitao

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[Dovecot] dovecot-1.0-test8 / nfs / maildir / flags issues
by Maikel Verheijen 14 May '04

14 May '04

Hi List, While (bluntly) testing the prerelease version of dovecot on our mailfarm (just for the webmail imap) we noticed some small problems: - While our OLD dovecot/imap drove the load to a maximum of 1 over a day after running, the new dovecot/imap pushes it easily to 20. This is mainly due to a LOT more disk activity. This is probably caused by the fact we a) use indexes on disk and b) there are no indexes left. I hope this will smooth out when most of the indexes are made. - We notice some very strange "delete" flag things in our IMP webmail system (working on a test environment to be more specific). The problem is that if you mark some messages "deleted", a lot of messages that do NOT have "deleted" flag are also in the deleted list. Since nothing changed on the webmail, it must be in the way dovecot responds different in the new version on certain requests. - In the dotlocking code, it seems that dovecot uses time() for it's internal locktime, and uses stat() to see if the file-time of the lock is different. Since we use nfs there might be a time-difference on the file creation and time() when our nfs gets "busy". This happens a lot when the indexes are created for multiple users at the same time resulting in a lot of: May 12 08:57:44 mf1 dovecot[3763]: imap(user(a)domain.tld): Our dotlock file /var/mail/mounted/d/do/domain.tld/user/Maildir/.INBOX/ dovecot.index.log.lock was modified (1084345063 vs 1084345062), assuming it wasn't overridden I am not completely sure if this interrupts imap traffic. I think this MIGHT be solved by storing a stat() time as the locktime instead of a time(), but this might be intentional. - I patched dovecot to report its pid in syslog messages, in order to find the "killed by signal X" where X are mostly 11 and 6 processes. The pids reported do not show up in the rest of the log file, so these may be "disconnected" sessions? It seems that the "old" version has the same problem, and nobody really complained it was broken, so this isn't a big issue. To clarify our setup: We use multiple mail-frontends running dovecot that are load-balanced by a cisco load-balancer. We mount our mailstores from an active-active backend cluster, both nodes export a big partition, and take over the job of the other in case of a problem. This seems to go pretty smooth. Our users are stored in a pgsql database. In our current setup, we run a modified cvs version of dovecot from WAY back, to support nfs. The backdraw is that we can't use the newer dovecot releases, since I couldn't modify the source in the way I did it the first time (with a LOT of help from Timo :P). If anyone has some ideas on where to look and where to test in order to get our problems more clear, I would be very grateful :) Kind regards, Maikel Verheijen Ladot Nederland BV.

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[Dovecot] Problem building 1.0-test7 : missing header
by Curtis Maloney 13 May '04

13 May '04

Greetings, I recently rolled out Dovecot in our small (<30 people) company, and have been mightily impressed by the quality, performance and ease of use. I was hoping to use the new versions soon, as I'd like to start using CRAM-MD5 (much more common in mail clients than DIGEST-MD5), but found the 0.99.11 versions too unstable. So, I tried to build last nights CVS snapshot (May 10th), only to have the make break at this point: make[3]: Entering directory `/home/src/dovecot-1.0-test7/src/lib-index' make[3]: *** No rule to make target `mail-index-util.h', needed by `mail-cache.o'. Stop. I know it's not much, but it's a start at giving back a little. Hope it helps. -- Curtis Maloney

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[Dovecot] Codepage of folder names
by Petr Tuma 13 May '04

13 May '04

Hi, I have run into a problem configuring DoveCot 0.99 on a Linux server that handles Windows users. The server uses UTF8 on its filesystem but the Outlook IMAP folder names are sent in what looks like CP852. As a result, folder names that use national characters are damaged, which in turn breaks a webmail application running on the same server. A natural solution would be DoveCot translating folder names from CP852 coming across the wire to UTF8 used in filesystem operations, but I did not find any option for that in the configuration. Anybody encountered and solved this problem ? Petr Tuma

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[Dovecot] Is Dovecot ready for production use?
by Benjamin J. Weiss 12 May '04

12 May '04

Hi! I'm currently running RH 9 with postfix, uw-imap and MailScanner. I want to install Fedora Core 2 (when it comes out next week) with postfix, dovecot and amavisd. I'm unhappy with the problems I'm having with MailScanner, with the difficulty I've had with authentication as I am currently configured, and want to move to Maildir instead of mbox. That being said, is dovecot stable enough yet for production use? I only have four users on my home linux box, but I personally get around 500 emails a day (that fedora list is *busy*). Thanks, Ben

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[Dovecot] php.ini tweak
by Avery 12 May '04

12 May '04

I noticed this is my /etc/php.ini file ---------------------------------------- ; This directive tells PHP whether to declare the argv&argc variables (that ; would contain the GET information). If you don't use these variables, you ; should turn it off for increased performance. register_argc_argv = on ---------------------------------------- I ma trying to squeeze some extra performance out of my email server. If I turn this to off will this cause any problems with SQmail or any of SQmail's plugins. I tried turned this setting to off and everything seems to work fine. I am surprised that no one has asked about this before in this mailing list. Thanks, Avery

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[Dovecot] LDAP + passwd
by Paolo Basenghi 12 May '04

12 May '04

Hello, I'm in the process to choose between Courier and Dovecot. I would like to know if it's possible to configure Dovecot in order to use multiple user database (e.g. ldap+passwd) in order to have both virtual user authenticated by LDAP and system user authenticated by system password and with their own home directory. Another question: at http://dovecot.org/doc/dovecot-example.conf there is a configuration example that seems not work with Dovecot 0.99.10.4 It result in a "Fatal: Error in configuration file /etc/dovecot.conf line 391: Missing value". Line 391 is: "auth default {" Thank you for attention. Best regards. -- ___________________________________________________________________ Ing. PAOLO BASENGHI :::: Systems & Networking Engineer p.basenghi(a)netribe.it ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ NETRIBE srl :: Collaborative E-Business 42100 :: Reggio Emilia :: Italy :: Via della Costituzione, 27/4 ph. +39 0522 232378 :: fax +39 0522 232386 :: http://www.netribe.it ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

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[Dovecot] Case sensitive user names
by Jeff Graves 12 May '04

12 May '04

Hello list. This is my first post and I hope that I have something useful for people. Using Fedora Core 1 with the stock dovecot-0.99.10 RPM I noticed that user names were case sensitive which was a problem for me since I was attempting to set up winbind authentication which meant that what dovecot thought the homedir was could change depending upon the case the user typed in. Sendmail/procmail always changed the username to lowercase so I needed a way to duplicate this behavior. At any rate, I searched the archives and found Andrew's post from March: http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2004-March/003067.html - using this as a jumping point and I finally have case insensitive user names (better yet, forced lower case usernames) working for plain-text authentication (eg. dovecot.conf: auth = plain, auth_userdb = passwd, auth_passdb = passwd). It has been tested only on the source RPM from Redhat FC1 and I'm not a C programmer so I have no idea if it will work with other authentication methods or newer versions of software. I've rebuilt the RPMs (source and i386) if anyone's interested and here's the patch for those not using RPMs (it's attached as well): diff -ru dovecot-0.99.10/src/auth/mech-plain.c dovecot-0.99.10.new/src/auth/mech-plain.c --- dovecot-0.99.10/src/auth/mech-plain.c 2003-05-18 08:26:28.000000000 -0400 +++ dovecot-0.99.10.new/src/auth/mech-plain.c 2004-05-11 16:58:30.000000000 -0400 @@ -57,6 +57,7 @@ authenid); } + auth_request->user = str_lcase(auth_request->user); if (!mech_is_valid_username(auth_request->user)) { /* invalid username */ if (verbose) { Thanks, Jeff Graves, MCP Customer Support Engineer Image Source, Inc. 10 Mill Street Bellingham, MA 02019 508.966.5200 - Phone 508.966.5170 - Fax jeff(a)image-src.com - Email

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[Dovecot] nfs dotlock issues
by Maikel Verheijen 11 May '04

11 May '04

Hi List, While testing with dovecot-1.0-test8 on our platform, I get al lot of these: May 11 11:42:50 mf1 dovecot: imap(user(a)domain.tld): Our dotlock file /var/mail/mounted/d/do/domain.tld/user/Maildir/.INBOX/ dovecot.index.log.lock was modified (1084268570 vs 1084268875), assuming it wasn't overridden This is probably due to some time-issues on our platform, and the load the backend has. (our backends run in a live environment). Can the dotlock code get the timestamp of the file when the dotlock gets created in order to be able to keep the time in sync? Is there another way to prevent those seconds of time-difference? we run ntpd on both our frondends and our backends. Kind regards, Maikel Verheijen

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[Dovecot] 1.0-test7
by Timo Sirainen 11 May '04

11 May '04

http://dovecot.org/test/ Lots of bugfixes related to syncing. There's still some left. Somewhat working mbox support: - combined syncing/rewriting uses much less disk I/O than with older mbox code - expunges aren't working yet - last-uid field in X-IMAPbase header isn't updated - it's currently syncing the whole mbox constantly even if it hasn't changed - it isn't hiding the mbox-specific headers from IMAP clients - if mbox hasn't changed, rewriting could start from the message which requires rewriting instead of syncing the whole mbox - syncing could keep the lock file extra two seconds to make sure if someone changes it the file's mtime changes -> as long as only Dovecot is modifying it, we'll never need to sync the whole mbox -> multi-gigabyte mboxes are still fast! One nice thing about this mbox code is that it isn't exactly mbox-specific. Some people are still using formats which use eg. ^A as separator rather than From-line. Some people are using SMTP-formatted data directly ('.' as mail separator, '..' = normal line begins with '.'). These formats should be pretty easy to implement now as all mbox-specific code is in istream-raw-mbox.c file. I'll probably do that once mbox itself is fully working.

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[Dovecot] Mail always is delivered to /var/mail/
by Kevin Breit 07 May '04

07 May '04

Hey, I am setting up Dovecot on Debian with Postfix. I am telling Dovecot to use maildir:~/Maildir but it persists in dumping mail in mbox format in /var/mail/username. Can anyone suggest ideas? My config file is attached. Thanks Kevin

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[Dovecot] imap indexing error when moving multiple mails
by Hauke Fath 06 May '04

06 May '04

Hi, I've got an 'interesting' problem with a dovecot 0.99.10.4 setup on NetBSD/i386 1.6ZK. dovecot is serving imap only at the moment, using mbox format mailboxes. '/etc/dovecot.conf' is pretty vanilla - among the modified settings, mail_read_mmaped = yes maildir_check_content_changes = yes mbox_lock = fcntl could be relevant. Anyway - from time to time when I move a bunch of mails ( < 1) from a mailbox to another (or to the trash), the client (I've seen it with Eudora 6 on a Mac, with Mozilla 1.6 and Sylpheed on NetBSD) reports an "internal error" and the maillog shows Mar 25 14:07:33 bounce imap-login: Login: hf [130.83.xxx.yyy] Mar 25 14:07:44 bounce imap(hf): Error indexing mbox file /home/hf/Mail/Leute/Marc Wirth: LF not found where expected Mar 25 14:09:30 bounce imap(hf): Error indexing mbox file /home/hf/Mail/Leute/Marc Wirth: LF not found where expected which, if I retry the operation to another time, does not persist and is not strictly repeatable. I've set the number of allowed concurrent connections to '1' on the client, but that doesn't help. Is there anything obvious that I overlooked, or have I tripped over a genuine bug? hauke -- Hauke Fath /~\ The ASCII Ribbon Campaign Institut für Nachrichtentechnik \ / No HTML/RTF in email TU Darmstadt X No Word docs in email Ruf +49-6151-16-3281, Fax -3778 / \ Respect for open standards

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[Dovecot] Dovecot chrooting
by ?a??µp?? ?a?a???t?? 06 May '04

06 May '04

hello all i am new to dovecot and i have a small problem. I use qmail as a pop3 server and dovecot as imap. my rc script is as follows: -----snip----- #!/bin/sh exec env - PATH="/var/qmail/bin:$PATH" \ qmail-start '|preline procmail' splogger qmai -----end----- thus i deliver mails through procmail so all mails are located to /var/spool/mail. The problem exists when i tested chrooting and found it a very good idea to jail all my users.. *but* still qmail delivers mails to the real /var/spool/mail and not to the /home/chrootusers/var/spool/mail so that dovecot can pick them up. Is there any special configuration in dovecot.conf in order to chroot the /var/spool/mail to /home/chrootusers ? some of my conf: login_chroot = yes valid_chroot_dirs = /home/chrootusers mail_chroot = /var/spool/mail default_mail_env = mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u PS: tell me if you need more of the dovecot.conf PS2: sorry for my english its not my native

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[Dovecot] Re: Timezone of logentries from dovecot (Timo Sirainen)
by Lars Skovgaard 04 May '04

04 May '04

On Thu, 2004-04-29 at 15:57, Timo Sirainen wrote: > One more reason to make all logging go through dovecot-master process.. > > Temporary fix of course is setting login_chroot = no to config file. Thanks, Timo, that did the trick. Also thanks to Quentin for his reply, though I don't understand any of it. As stated, my knowledge of unix is rather limited... On Thu, 2004-04-29 at 15:48, Quentin Garnier wrote: > It's because the logging process is chrooted, doesn't have TZ env. var. > set, and doesn't have a correct /etc/localtime (or whatever your libc > uses) _inside_ the chroot directory. Therefore its timezone is the > default, UTC (formerly known as GMT). As I understand it, it would be a good idea to come up with a more permanent fix. However, I have no idea where to begin. Timo writes about making all logging go through the dovecot-master process – can anyone point me in the direction of information on how to accomplish this? Quentin writes about TZ env. var. (TimeZone?), /etc/localtime and the chroot directory. I'm sorry, Quentin, but I need a bit more info. I have the correct /etc/localtime, as far as I can tell. I've tried looking up TZ env. var. in my man-pages, but haven't come up with anything. I'll copy my /etc/localtime to the login_dir and see if this is enough. Thanks again, guys! /Lars

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[Dovecot] Envelope From changed - why?
by Tom Alsberg 04 May '04

04 May '04

Hi there. I am evaluating Dovecot as an IMAP server. I noticed on thing which irritates me. When a user saves a message to an IMAP folder with the Dovecot server, the envelope From line is changed to the address of that user, instead of keeping the From line of the original message. How can I have the original envelope From line preserved when saving messages? -- Tom -- Tom Alsberg - certified insane, complete illiterate. Homepage: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~alsbergt/ * An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

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[Dovecot] Maildir files in cur without info
by Christoph Hohmann 04 May '04

04 May '04

Hi, I have tried to use the same Maildir dovecot uses with another program and encountered the problem that Dovecot seems to move files from new to cur in maildir-sync.c::maildir_scan_dir without adding an info part. On the page http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html is written that mails have to be renamed to uniq:info when moved to the cur directory. Could this be a bug in dovecot? -- http://reboot.animeirc.de http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net/

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[Dovecot] 1.0-test4
by Timo Sirainen 03 May '04

03 May '04

http://dovecot.org/test/ Maildir syncing should be pretty optimized now. And it works now with more than 40 messages in mailbox :)

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[Dovecot] Dovecot hangs after 2 or 3 days
by Jens Gutzeit 03 May '04

03 May '04

Hi all, We've some problems with our dovecot installation, its the latest stable compiled on a debian woody box. After 2 or 3 days dovecot hangs, no user can login (pop3 and imap), there's nothing in the logs. The client does allways timeout, if I restart dovecot all works well again. It's a box with s.th. around 400 users, we've enough mem free, load is not a problem, it went from 0.9 to 0.1 after migrating from cyrus-imapd, so this doesn't seem to be hardware related. My dovecot conf is online at: http://mail.sunday.de/dovecot.conf best regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen Jens Gutzeit -- Tel.: +492151 652945 Ein PC besteht sowieso i.d.R. zu 90% aus faulen Kompromissen, zu 7% aus Elektronikschrott und zu 3% aus wirren Ideen. Benedict Mangelsdorff

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[Dovecot] 1.0-test1 released
by Timo Sirainen 03 May '04

03 May '04

http://dovecot.org/test/ I couldn't break this with Evolution with a few minutes of testing, so here's the first tarball release based on the new indexing code. Try if you're interested, but don't try it on any real mailboxes, or at least keep backups :) Also note that dovecot-uidlist file format has changed a bit, Dovecot 0.99.x isn't able to read it anymore. Things to do: - mbox code doesn't even compile, so it's disabled - custom flags aren't implemented - recent flags are broken - cache file handling isn't working now, so it's disabled - maildir syncing code isn't as well optimized as it used to be - NFS-safety to indexes (pretty easy)

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[Dovecot] 1.0-test2 released
by Timo Sirainen 03 May '04

03 May '04

http://dovecot.org/test/ I still haven't done much real world testing, but I've been thinking about all the potential race conditions a lot since last time and fixed a lot of them. There might still be some.. Changes since -test1: - Locking fixes - A lot more difficult to crash it with corrupted index files - Recent flag works, this time exactly as IMAP RFC says - Maildir syncing fixes - fcntl_lock_disable and mmap_disable settings to make it work with NFS.. almost. Not very well tested and there's a few performance issues left. - mmap_no_write setting to disable mixing write/mmap calls. Required for OpenBSD. Uses slightly more memory. If you can break the indexes, I'd like to know about that. I think they should work pretty well now.

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[Dovecot] Timezone of logentries from dovecot
by Lars Skovgaard 29 Apr '04

29 Apr '04

Hi I've been using dovecot for a long time now, and have nothing but praise for it. It's considerably faster than uw-imap, and has been very easy to configure, in spite of my limited knowledge of unix. One thing still botheres me, though, and that's the time of the entries in my logfiles. It seems that dovecot logs it's entries in GMT, while I'm using GMT+1. This is made even worse by the fact that we're now using daylight savings time, which upps the difference to two hours. Here's a couple of lines from my logs to show the difference: Apr 29 14:30:07 misterp mach_kernel: ipfw: 10000 Deny UDP 213.122.19.185:33123 129.142.126.35:137 in via en0 Apr 29 14:30:59 misterp mach_kernel: ipfw: 4000 Accept TCP 80.197.22.210:38518 129.142.126.35:995 in via en0 Apr 29 12:30:59 misterp pop3-login: Login: torben [80.197.22.210] Apr 29 14:32:25 misterp mach_kernel: ipfw: 10000 Deny UDP 195.122.208.191:1066 129.142.126.35:1434 in via en0 I don't know how to fix this, whether it's in dovecot or somewhere in a system-setting. However, all other applications log their entries with the systems current setting, so I suspect it's in dovecot. I would very much appreciate any help on the subject. Btw, I'm using MacOS X 10.2 with dovecot 0.99.10.4. Thanks! /Lars

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[Dovecot] Index abuse
by Rick Jones 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

How resilient is Dovecot's indexing mechanism? (seeing as it's been extensively re-vamped I guess this question may have different answers for 0.99 & 1.0). To put it in context, I'm playing with server-side automatic maintenance scripts for things like deleting messages more than x days old from folders a, b, c, etc. (using Maildir layout). So far I'm just zapping files in the cur and new directories and nothing amiss appears to happen from the IMAP client's viewpoint. I just wonder if I'm storing up trouble. Will the index files continue to hold references to non-existent files and get bloated, or do they self-clean? -- Rick Jones

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[Dovecot] Feature request: more log info/stats
by Christian Balzer 27 Apr '04

27 Apr '04

Hello, even though Timo seems to be hibernating (it's not _that_ cold in ole Suomi ;) I'd like to beg for a feature that would be very much appreciated over here. If something like this is already present and eluded my thorough archive and doc searches, feel free to smack me and then point me to the right direction. Feature request: More extensive session information and statistics in the logs. Currently all I can get from dovecot is login information, there's not even a log entry when a session was ended either by the client or a timeout. In addition a short summary would be be very helpful, qpoppers one liner stats come to mind like this: --- Apr 12 05:30:30 test in.qpopper[21266]: Stats: test 6 21868 2 108126 some.do.main IP.AD.DR.ES [pop_updt.c:296] --- Stating that user test downloaded/deleted 6 mails with 21868 bytes total and kept 2 in the inbox. This might be expanded on for IMAP operations like moves or such and raw data about transferred bytes in/out added (in my case I get that info from perdition), but the really important parts are: When did a user log into the server, when did that session end? How many new mails were read and how many mails deleted during that session? The rationale is that with this info at hand the (unfortunately) very common user whining along the lines of "the mail server ate my mails" or "I never saw this mail!" are much easier to refute. Regards and keep up the good work, Christian Balzer -- Christian Balzer Network/Systems Engineer NOC chibi(a)gol.com Global OnLine Japan/Fusion Network Services http://www.gol.com/

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[Dovecot] Setting "default_mail_env" Why is index->mailbox_path empty?
by Robert McLay 27 Apr '04

27 Apr '04

I now have default_mail_env = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=:/var/spool/mail/%u I now getting: Apr 26 15:55:32 jedrik imap(mclay): open() failed with mbox file : No such file or directory I tracked down where the error message is getting generated and added some more printing: In mbox-index.c I added: int mbox_set_syscall_error(struct mail_index *index, const char *function) { i_assert(function != NULL); i_error("index->mailbox_path: %%%s%%", index->mailbox_path); i_error("index->dir: %%%s%%", index->dir); i_error("index->filepath: %%%s%%", index->filepath); i_error("index->control_dir: %%%s%%", index->control_dir); index_set_error(index, "%s failed with mbox file %s: %m", function, index->mailbox_path); return FALSE; } This generates the following output. It seems clear that the initial reading of mbox is read correctly because index->dir and others have values derived from it but for some reason mailbox_path is empty. This is version 0.99.10.4 built with gcc 3.3.2. Here is the bottom of running ./configure: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Install prefix ...................... : /vol/pkg/dovecot/0.99.10.4 File offsets ........................ : 64bit Building with SSL support ........... : yes (OpenSSL) Building with IPv6 support .......... : yes Building with pop3 server ........... : yes Building with user database modules . : static passwd passwd-file (modules) Building with password lookup modules : passwd passwd-file shadow pam (modules) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): index->mailbox_path: %% Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): index->dir: %/home/mclay/mail/.imap/INBOX% Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): index->filepath: %/home/mclay/mail/.imap/INBOX/.imap.index% Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): index->control_dir: %/home/mclay/mail/.imap/INBOX% Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): open() failed with mbox file : No such file or directory Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): index->mailbox_path: %% Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): index->dir: %/home/mclay/mail/.imap/INBOX% Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): index->filepath: %(in-memory index for )% Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): index->control_dir: %/home/mclay/mail/.imap/INBOX% Apr 26 17:06:51 jedrik imap(mclay): stat() failed with mbox file : No such file or directory Any ideas? Thanks

2 1

[Dovecot] Newbie Q: Setting up under linux: Spool directory.
by Robert McLay 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

I am trying to set up dovecot under linux. (RH9 if it matters). I'm having trouble having it find the mail that is already delivered. What I would like is that mail is delivered by fetch mail to /var/spool/mail/mclay (that me) then have dovecot find it. I'm sure that I have not set the dovecot.conf file correctly. The documentation is unclear as to what "mbox" is and "INBOX" is. I have tried having default_mail_env unset and with the following: default_mail_env = mbox:/var/spool/mail/%u:INBOX=:/home/%u/Maildir What I get when I talk to it directly is: $ telnet localhost imap Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost Escape character is '^]'. * OK dovecot ready. A00002 LOGIN mclay "xxxxxx" A00002 OK Logged in. A00003 SELECT INBOX A00003 NO Internal error [2004-04-26 12:56:03] So could a kind sole point me in the right direction? Thanks

2 1

[Dovecot] syslog() logging problems
by James Moser 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

was wondering if anyone else has had problems with dovecot logging to syslog? When I start the server it works fine, then after an hour or so it stops.. restarting the server always makes it work again. -- James L Moser james(a)powweb.com PowWeb Hosting http://www.powweb.com /(bb|[^b]{2})/, that is the Question. mysql>SELECT * FROM user WHERE clue > 0; Empty set (0.03 sec) Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die... Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing...

2 3

[Dovecot] shared folders?
by Gareth J. Greenaway 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

Greetings, I saw mention in results from a google search that there was some support in dovecot CVS for shared folders, is there some docs on how to use them? Provided there is in fact support for them in CVS. Thanks. -- Gareth J. Greenaway | gareth(a)wiked.org SCLUG - Simi Conejo Linux Users Group http://www.sclug.org

3 2

RE: [Dovecot] triggering multiple actions on pop-3 request
by Julian Melville 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

> The reason for this is so that the messages > retrieved by fetchmail can be filtered via an anti spam > service before depositing them into the inbox. How about just running fetchmail in daemon mode, so it's polling for messages instead of running on demand? Then you don't need to worry about any special integration issues. Julian.

4 7

[Dovecot] RE: Missed config option
by Alex S Moore 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

I am trying to sync a set of maildir folders from a dovecot server and a different imap server on a different host. Using a perl tool called imapsync. The tool says the following about the two servers capabilities: >From capability : IMAP4rev1 SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN LISTEXT LIST-SUBSCRIBED To capability : IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE ACL ACL2=UNION No NAMESPACE capability in imap server sws601.mcsun.local Give the separator character with the --sep1 option The From server sws601.mcsun.local is dovecot. What did I miss that causes the NAMESPACE capability to not be seen from dovecot? What is the separator character? Thanks, Alex --

2 2

[Dovecot] imap errors filtering folders with evolution
by Brent Hills 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

Hello, I posted earlier to the Ximian Evolution Users list. It was suggested I follow up in relation to dovecot. They also indicated the timestamp in the error message was coming from dovecot. When filtering a folder on a dovecot (0.99.10) imap server with Evolution version 1.46 I receive: Error while 'Filtering Folder' Imap command failed internal error [YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS] The timestamp seems to be the current time. The filters used are primarily move to folder where the destination folder is another imap folder on the same server. The error can be reproduced reliably if I select a large number of email to filter. There are about 10 filters all moving to different folders based on criteria. If I select smaller number of email the error occurs but less predictably. Eventually, it will filter all the email so its not a particular one that it hangs up on. Is anyone familiar with this issue? Brent Hills.

2 1

[Dovecot] dovecot dies - mabye a clue?
by Steven Stern 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

Dovecot died twice today. This was in the maillog: Apr 9 17:50:27 ciscy pop3-login: RAND_bytes() failed: error:24064064:random number generator:SSLEAY_RAND_BYTES:PRNG not seeded Apr 9 17:50:27 ciscy dovecot: Login process died too early - shutting down I think I can cause it to happen reliably and I'm asking for other to test this scenario: Open several terminal windows. In each, type "telnet 127.0.0.1 110". Wait for the dovecot POP prompt and do nothing. After each times out, up-arrow and try again. Sometime in the next hour, dovecot will die. -- Steve

2 1

[Dovecot] file permissions help!
by smk 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

Hi all! Ran into a problem and hopefully i can get some help. OK here is my set up: - dovecot-0.99.10.4 + MySQL patch. - Redhat 9 The authentication part works just fine. It gives me the following entry in the log file: imap-login: "Apr 12 22:15:10 "Info: Login: USER(a)DOMAIN.com [127.0.0.1] But there is a problem with dovecot reading the mbox file (I think). In the error file I get this entry: imap(USER(a)DOMAIN.com): "Apr 12 22:15:10 "Fatal: Failed to create storage with data: /export/htdocs/DOMAIN.com/mail/USER dovecot: "Apr 12 22:15:11 "Error: child 18613 (imap) returned error 89 Of course the user and domain info was changed. I am out of ideas but thats not to say its something easy or something I completely looked over. This is how I compiled dovecot: CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/mysql/include/mysql -DPASSDB_MYSQL -DUSERDB_MYSQL" \ LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/ -lmysqlclient" \ \ ./configure \ --prefix=/usr/local/imapd \ --disable-ipv6 \ --without-pop3d \ --without-ssl \ --with-storages=mbox \ --enable-debug thanks in advance. Scott

2 1

[Dovecot] Problem with flags
by Jeff Hoskinson 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

Greetings! I'm having a problem with flags not working correctly. I'm using Mozilla Thunderbird as my mail client, and Dovecot 0.99.10.4 as part of Debian on a Sparc box. The thing that doesn't seem to be working right is Thunderbird's Label feature, which uses custom IMAP flags. I noticed that once I labeled a message, I couldn't un-label it. I recorded this exchange between Thunderbird and Dovecot while using the Label/None command on a message: 5235 uid store 35 -Flags ($Label1 $Label2 $Label3 $Label4 $Label5) * 35 FETCH (FLAGS (\Answered \Seen NonJunk $Label4 $Label5) UID 35) 5235 OK Store completed. Even though Thunderbird is sending the -Flags command for all its custom flags, the message is still retaining two of those flags. Just out of curiousity, I tried changing the flag of that same message to something different, and recorded this exchange: 5259 uid store 35 +Flags ($Label2) * 35 FETCH (FLAGS (\Answered \Seen NonJunk $Label4 $Label2 $Label5) UID 35) 5259 OK Store completed. 5260 uid store 35 -Flags ($Label1 $Label3 $Label4 $Label5) * 35 FETCH (FLAGS (\Answered \Seen NonJunk $Label4 $Label2 $Label5) UID 35) 5260 OK Store completed. So it seems the +Flags command works, but not the -Flags? Or does it have something to do with sending more than one flag at a time? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, -- Jeff

2 1

[Dovecot] [OT] Is there a secure reverse IMAP proxy
by Sven Kirmess 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

This question is off topic. I ask this list because the question is related to security and IMAP and I guess the people in this list know a lot about both of that. Is there a secure reverse proxy for the IMAP protocol? Something you can install on a bastion host which checks the IMAP traffic before forwarding it to the internal IMAP server? There are these proxies for WebMail to IMAP connections but as far as I can tell they were not created for security reasons and not with security as primary goal. Sven

3 2

[Dovecot] SSL Ciphers
by John Wentworth 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

I have dovecot running as a pop3s server on port 995 it works great with sendmail and I run nessus to check security issues nessus reports this The SSLv2 server offers 3 strong ciphers, but also 0 medium strength and 2 weak "export class" ciphers. The weak/medium ciphers may be chosen by an export-grade or badly configured client software. They only offer a limited protection against a brute force attack Solution: disable those ciphers and upgrade your client software if necessary I have previously disabled weak ciphers in apache but cannot figure out how to disable the weak ciphers in dovecot Any help would be appreciated john

2 1

[Dovecot] problems with squirrelmail and TLS (debian unstable)
by Amelia A Lewis 26 Apr '04

26 Apr '04

Heylas, So, okay, I've had this lovely IMAP server running, and adore the ease of configuration, among other things. Problem, though. I'm trying to set up SquirrelMail, so that some folks with accounts on my box can use it without having to set up a proper imap client (or can check mail when they're at a cafe, or like that). However, I *won't* turn off the disable_plaintext_auth, 'cause I'm damned if I'll set up a box that asks people to send passwords in the clear, and there *are* people using imap. Dovecot cannot, currently, be configured to permit plaintext on localhost while requiring Something Better from the rest of the world. This becomes a problem with SquirrelMail, which can't cope with TLS. It just barfs. Looking at bug reports in debian, this has already been noticed, and the maintainer there (and the maintainers of SquirrelMail) considers this a non-problem, 'cause, they say, you shouldn't be using TLS with webmail. Is there a way to set up, for instance, two instances of dovecot, running on different ports, so that one listens to the external interface and the other listens to localhost? I don't much like the idea, but how would I go about doing this? Two copies of dovecot.conf and a command-line switch? Amy! -- Amelia A. Lewis amyzing {at} talsever.com Yankees are compelled by some mysterious force to imitate Southern accents and they're so damn dumb they don't know the difference beween a Tennessee drawl and a Charleston clip. -- Rita Mae Brown, "Rubyfruit Jungle"

4 4

[Dovecot] error dropping root group priv
by Thomas Abthorpe 24 Apr '04

24 Apr '04

Good morning all, I am new to this list. I have been running FreeBSD 5.1 with dovecot successfully for about a year. Just recently, I built a new machine with 5.2.1-p5 on the Intel platform with dovecot-0.99.10.4_2. When I use the same configuration options on the new machine, I get Apr 24 10:53:59 standrew pop3-login: Login: tabthorpe [172.16.1.100] Apr 24 10:53:59 standrew pop3(tabthorpe): We couldn't drop root group privileges Apr 24 10:53:59 standrew dovecot: child 44134 (pop3) returned error 89 Any suggestion? Thanks in advance. Thomas -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. Postmaster http://www.stthomasanglican.org

1 0

[Dovecot] SSL Ciphers
by John Wentworth 23 Apr '04

23 Apr '04

I have dovecot running as a pop3s server on port 995 it works great with sendmail and I run nessus to check security issues nessus reports this The SSLv2 server offers 3 strong ciphers, but also 0 medium strength and 2 weak "export class" ciphers. The weak/medium ciphers may be chosen by an export-grade or badly configured client software. They only offer a limited protection against a brute force attack Solution: disable those ciphers and upgrade your client software if necessary I have previously disabled weak ciphers in apache but cannot figure out how to disable the weak ciphers in dovecot Any help would be appreciated john

1 0

[Dovecot] SSL Ciphers
by John Wentworth 23 Apr '04

23 Apr '04

I have dovecot running as a pop3s server on port 995 it works great with sendmail and I run nessus to check security issues nessus reports this The SSLv2 server offers 3 strong ciphers, but also 0 medium strength and 2 weak "export class" ciphers. The weak/medium ciphers may be chosen by an export-grade or badly configured client software. They only offer a limited protection against a brute force attack Solution: disable those ciphers and upgrade your client software if necessary I have previously disabled weak ciphers in apache but cannot figure out how to disable the weak ciphers in dovecot Any help would be appreciated john

1 0

[Dovecot] Is dovecot distributed with RHEL 3.0
by Avery 20 Apr '04

20 Apr '04

I can't seem to find out if dovecot is packaged with RHEL 3.0. It seems redhat makes it hard to find what packages you get when you purchase their RHEL. Does anyone know if dovecot is disributed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 3.0? I know dovecot is distribured with redhat 9.0 and fedora. Thanks, -- Avery

4 3

[Dovecot] configuring dovecot for NIS (w/ pam)
by Yedidia Klein 20 Apr '04

20 Apr '04

Hi, I am trying to start using dovecot on a linux machine. I config it to auth w/ my passwd/shadow and it worked perefectly. I'm not getting to config it to work with my SUN NIS (not +) As I understood I must use PAM for this, I tried to config it w/o any success... do someone has a config file/ pam config for this ? thanks --Yedidia

1 0

[Dovecot] RE: dovecot Digest, Vol 12, Issue 21
by Alban Dani 20 Apr '04

20 Apr '04

Hi Adrian, You are right. I had a space after the .1. Now dovecot is listening fine on 127.0.0.1. Thanks a lot. I would have never thought of it. Alban Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 08:37:21 +0200 From: Adrian Ulrich <dovecot(a)blinkenlights.ch> Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Can't resolve address 127.0.0.1 To: dovecot(a)dovecot.org Message-ID: <20040420083721.1d1a4323.dovecot(a)blinkenlights.ch> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Hello, > imap_listen = 127.0.0.1 Check if you have a space after .1: 'imap_listen = 127.0.0.1' maybe not the same as 'imap_listen = 127.0.0.1 ' bye

1 0

Re: [Dovecot] Can't resolve address 127.0.0.1
by Alban Dani 20 Apr '04

20 Apr '04

Rick thanks for the message, -I have not done any changes to the default nsswitch.conf. I checked and the entry hosts: files dns is there -127.0.0.1 localhost entry is in the /etc/hosts file. -ifconfig shows that the interface is up and I can successfully ping it by name ( ping localhost ). What else can be wrong. I am totally lost here. Alban Rick Johnson wrote: >Alban Dani wrote: >> Hi , >> >> I recently installed Fedora Core 1. >> >> Installed postfix on it and that is running fine. >> >> I am trying to get dovecot to run and I have changed only the following >> line from the default dovecot.conf : >> >> imap_listen = 127.0.0.1 since I'd like to install squirrelmail later on. >> >> Now when I try to start dovecot I get "Starting Dovecot Imap: Fatal: >> Can't resolve address 127.0.0.1 : Name or service not known" > >Does /etc/hosts still contain an entry for localhost? > >Does /etc/nsswitch.conf still reference files for name resolution? > >Is the interface lo active? (run ifconfig to find out) > >-Rick > >-- >Rick Johnson, RHCE #807302311706007 - rjohnson(a)medata.com >Linux/Network Administrator - Medata, Inc. >PGP Public Key: https://mail.medata.com/pgp/rjohnson.asc >

2 1

[Dovecot] Wiki: virutal user with Sendmail and OpenLDAP
by Zoong Pham 20 Apr '04

20 Apr '04

In the Wiki, section 2, "Virtual user support with OpenLDAP", does the example apply to non Sendmail? If that's the case, can someone post a quick guide about setup virtual user with Sendmail. I use OpenBSD-3.4, BTW. TIA, Zoong

1 0

[Dovecot] Can't resolve address 127.0.0.1
by Alban Dani 20 Apr '04

20 Apr '04

Hi , I recently installed Fedora Core 1. Installed postfix on it and that is running fine. I am trying to get dovecot to run and I have changed only the following line from the default dovecot.conf : imap_listen = 127.0.0.1 since I'd like to install squirrelmail later on. Now when I try to start dovecot I get "Starting Dovecot Imap: Fatal: Can't resolve address 127.0.0.1 : Name or service not known" Can anybody help me? Alban

2 1

[Dovecot] configuration problem.. with passwd
by Kartik Vaidyanathan 19 Apr '04

19 Apr '04

Hi i was trying to configure dovecot. Under the authentication section i have set the auth_passdb=/etc/passwd auth_user=root auth_userdb=/etc/passwd But it gives Error in configuration file /etc/dovecot.conf line 398 :missing value which points to auth_passdb=/etc/passwd in the file. Firstly do i need setup some other parameters I want to follow the most simple authentication process. Please advice. thanks

2 1

[Dovecot] adding new user to dovecot
by Kartik Vaidyanathan 18 Apr '04

18 Apr '04

Hi, Your mail was very insightful. You have stated in you mail as follows .. "But I think they create virtual users in database systems for email, I can't imagine all of the users they have are in one passwd file on one tiny machine." a. What do you mean by virtual users. b. How does one link them to a mailbox. Very frankly i am confused... 1.Well lets say i have a user who wants to create a new group say GROUP1.Lets say i have users who want to create GROUP1(a)pigeonhole.com or GROUP2(a)pigeonhole.com .This group name will be entered in my JSP page, now what do i have to do to create the group. 2.How do i see to that anyone who sends a mail to GROUP2@pigeonhole receives it in it mailbox( Firstly does the group have a mails box in the groups name).Will one create a account(mailbox) for the group or how is it done. 3.Lastly I actually want to create a mailing List manager. Please advice on how to go about it. Regards Kartik On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 Wouter Van Hemel wrote : >On Fri, 16 Apr 2004, Kartik Vaidyanathan wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > I have actually configured dovecot because i required a mail server in > > order to build a mailing list manager.A mail list manager is something > > in the likes of yahoogroups, where each group in my case must have a > > mailbox. > > > >You need a MTA, such as postfix, qmail, sendmail, exim, etc. It's more >important than an imap server for what you want to do. > >Actually, I don't really understand why you need an imap server when >making a mailinglist manager. > > > 1. I am using Debian OS. > > The software that i am creating , which is going developed in JSP, will > > take a new users name and password and create a account for him by > > executing a shell script in my linux machine.I assume yahoo also does > > something similar to this to create new mail boxes for any new > > user.Please correct me if i am wrong. > > > >I don't know, I don't work at yahoo. But I think they create virtual users >in database systems for email, I can't imagine all of the users they have >are in one passwd file on one tiny machine. > > > In fact this very mail that i have received from you is because i have > > subscribed to the dovecott mailing list. How do you think dovecott has > > been able to accomplish this. Is it not because that dovecott has a > > mailbox in the group name "dovecott" in some system, that internally > > does the sending of mails to all those in the groups refering to some > > database. > > > >Dovecot doesn't have anything to do with that. It's mostly the MTA, aided >by the mailing list manager. > >Here's how majordomo (popular mailinglist manager) works: > >Bob wants to subscribe to the pigeonhole mailinglist. He emails or enters >his email address in a web form so it ends up in a database file with all >the other users on that list. The mailinglist manager's job is to take >care of adding (or removing) email addresses to (from) that file; it adds >Bob's address. > >When an email is sent to pigeonhole(a)pigeonhole.org, the mailer daemon >(MTA) receives this email, and instead of delivering it to a local user, >either it (1) delivers it to a pipe - it passes the email to the >mailinglist software, which then just generates an email that replaces the >original destination with the list of email addresses; or (2) the mailer >daemon itself forwards the email by alias expansion to the list of email >addresses the mailinglist software made. > >In the former case, the mailinglist manager reads the original message and >replaces the address with all those in the list's database; in the latter >case, basically the only thing a mailinglist manager does, is taking care >of an error-free database file with email addresses so the MTA can forward >the email to the addresses in this file. > >Because Bob's email address is in this file, his address will be inserted >in the headers of the message, and he will receive the email. > > > 2.Will the mail server support me in anyway by giving me some > > functionality to add users, thereby creating maildir's (imap) for the > > users. > > > >No, adding users is not the job of a mail server daemon. Or of an imap >server. Usually, you don't allow people to add users to your system, for >obvious reasons. > >If you want to add users to a mailing list, you don't need accounts for >those users, only when you also want to provide them with an email address. > >What do you want to do: provide email addresses, or a mailinglist manager? > > > 3.Dont I need to know the admin login and passwd, to create users? > > > >Yes, ofcourse. Unless your users are in a database server, in that case >you need the ability to add records to that database. > >(Shared webhosting accounts usually allow adding virtual users, if that's >the reasoning behind your question.) > > > 3.Lastly i know this is not that prevalent a question -> I was told mail > > man does a similar job as to what my software will do.Do you know how > > mailman works (or even yahoogroups)?. > > > >Not precisely, but pretty much like I said above. You can check out the >documentation and source code of said software. > >Yahoogroups probably uses custom written software, but still based on the >simple approach of a mailinglist manager taking care of a list of >subscribers, and the mailer daemon either itself or by aid of an external >program multiplicating the recipients. > > >A mailinglist manager has nothing to do with Dovecot. Dovecot has nothing >to do with *sending* email, only with retrieving it from a system with >IMAP of POP. It's the end-of-the-line for emails, delivery to final >destination; it does not forward or duplicate. > > > Please enlighten me on the above issues. > > Thanks a lot for you time. > > > >I'll send you the bill later. ;) > > > Regards > > Kartik > > > > > > > > >

2 1

Re: Re: [Dovecot] adding new user to dovecot
by Kartik Vaidyanathan 18 Apr '04

18 Apr '04

Hi, Thanks a lot for the mails.Well one major doubt that was prevailing was that do i need to create a system account for each person in order to send/receive mails, and from both(Sven Kirmess & Johannes Berg ) your mails i gather it is a must. But Is there a workaround to this? I have actually configured dovecot because i required a mail server in order to build a mailing list manager.A mail list manager is something in the likes of yahoogroups, where each group in my case must have a mailbox. 1. I am using Debian OS. The software that i am creating , which is going developed in JSP, will take a new users name and password and create a account for him by executing a shell script in my linux machine.I assume yahoo also does something similar to this to create new mail boxes for any new user.Please correct me if i am wrong. In fact this very mail that i have received from you is because i have subscribed to the dovecott mailing list. How do you think dovecott has been able to accomplish this. Is it not because that dovecott has a mailbox in the group name "dovecott" in some system, that internally does the sending of mails to all those in the groups refering to some database. 2.Will the mail server support me in anyway by giving me some functionality to add users, thereby creating maildir's (imap) for the users. 3.Dont I need to know the admin login and passwd, to create users? 3.Lastly i know this is not that prevalent a question -> I was told mail man does a similar job as to what my software will do.Do you know how mailman works (or even yahoogroups)?. Please enlighten me on the above issues. Thanks a lot for you time. Regards Kartik

3 3

[Dovecot] adding new user to dovecot
by Kartik Vaidyanathan 16 Apr '04

16 Apr '04

Hi, This is from your documentation Creating new users ------------------ Dovecot is interested in only one thing - being able to find the user's mail directory. With maildir you need to do mkdir ~user/Maildir, with mbox mkdir ~user/mail. what does ~ refer to. Pardon my ignorance in unix, i am relatively new to unix. Does not ~ refer to the user account in which you have logged in. So does that mean that maildir folder exist for only user accounts that already exist.My intention for asking the above is that i have a java program running, that will take a new users name and password, so with that can i create a mailbox for that person , or does the admin have to create an user account for that person , so that his maildir folder can be created. Please clarify my understanding of how it workds.. Thanks

3 2

RE: [Dovecot] I added a "SQ and Dovecot FAQ" on the SQ website
by Avery Day 14 Apr '04

14 Apr '04

<quote who="Julian Melville"> >> Maybe someone can verify my setup procedure really quick. > > Looks the same as mine except for saying that the server is like > Courier... I left that bit blank and haven't had any hassles. What does > that change I wonder? > > Cheers, > > Julian. > > Actually I stole alot of the procedure from some website. Im not taking credit for anything I'm just doing the dirty work :) If you do perl conf.pl and change the IMAP server to courier it tells you everything that it changes --------------------------------------------------------- Please select your IMAP server: cyrus = Cyrus IMAP server uw = University of Washington's IMAP server exchange = Microsoft Exchange IMAP server courier = Courier IMAP server macosx = Mac OS X Mailserver quit = Do not change anything Command >> courier imap_server_type = courier default_folder_prefix = INBOX. trash_folder = Trash sent_folder = Sent draft_folder = Drafts show_prefix_option = false default_sub_of_inbox = false show_contain_subfolders_option = false optional_delimiter = . delete_folder = true ---------------------------------------------------------- -- Avery

1 0

RE: [Dovecot] I added a "SQ and Dovecot FAQ" on the SQ website
by Julian Melville 13 Apr '04

13 Apr '04

> Maybe someone can verify my setup procedure really quick. Looks the same as mine except for saying that the server is like Courier... I left that bit blank and haven't had any hassles. What does that change I wonder? Cheers, Julian.

1 0

[Dovecot] Calling gentoo maintainers
by Zach Bagnall 13 Apr '04

13 Apr '04

If anyone knows someone with CVS access can they please take another look at http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22080. It has been in bugzilla for nearly nine months. Would like to see this in portage - masked is fine - so at least everyone is working off the same file. Cheers Zach.

2 2

RE: [Dovecot] I added a "SQ and Dovecot FAQ" on the SQ website
by Zoong Pham 13 Apr '04

13 Apr '04

Is that dovecot in your FAQ serving mbox or mdir format? Thanks, Zoong -----Original Message----- From: Avery Day [mailto:schrock@dayzed.com] Sent: Tuesday, 13 April 2004 12:07 PM To: dovecot(a)dovecot.org Subject: [Dovecot] I added a "SQ and Dovecot FAQ" on the SQ website On the Squirrelmail website I setup in the FAQ a quick install guid on how to get squirrelmail to work with Dovecot. Maybe someone can verify my setup procedure really quick. Maybe someone thinks this is wrong. Also if you have something to add please do so. No one has bothered to do this before so I took it upon my self. Here is the link in the FAQ its about 8 lines down http://www.squirrelmail.org/wiki/en_US/InstallingSquirrelMail Here is where the link takes you http://www.squirrelmail.org/wiki/en_US/SquirrelMailAndDovecotIMAP Thanks -- Avery

2 1

[Dovecot] I added a "SQ and Dovecot FAQ" on the SQ website
by Avery Day 13 Apr '04

13 Apr '04

On the Squirrelmail website I setup in the FAQ a quick install guid on how to get squirrelmail to work with Dovecot. Maybe someone can verify my setup procedure really quick. Maybe someone thinks this is wrong. Also if you have something to add please do so. No one has bothered to do this before so I took it upon my self. Here is the link in the FAQ its about 8 lines down http://www.squirrelmail.org/wiki/en_US/InstallingSquirrelMail Here is where the link takes you http://www.squirrelmail.org/wiki/en_US/SquirrelMailAndDovecotIMAP Thanks -- Avery

1 0

[Dovecot] Dovecot for production environment
by Avery Day 11 Apr '04

11 Apr '04

Sorry if this question has been asked before I looked through some of the archives before posting this. I am considering using dovecot on a small 35 user environment (only around 6 gigs of email) that will be primarly be used with squirrelmail for the MUA. I have been using dovecot for a few weeks now and really like it. It is a big improvement over uw-imap thats for sure. I was wondering how many people in this mailing list are using dovecot for a production email server, and why you chose to use dovecot over cyrus or courier. Or maybe someone feels that dovecot isnt ready for this type of thing just yet. I am all ears so please feel free. Thanks -- Avery -- Avery Day

10 18

[Dovecot] Missing mail file - Internal Error
by James Moser 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

I have noticed that if the user does not already have a mail file, for instance in /var/mail, the IMAP server responds with Internal Error, and the pop server imediately terminates the connection. Is this something I have configuered wrong? Are there any work arounds for this... /var/mail is owned by root:mail with permissions 0775... -- James L Moser james(a)powweb.com PowWeb Hosting http://www.powweb.com /(bb|[^b]{2})/, that is the Question. mysql>SELECT * FROM user WHERE clue > 0; Empty set (0.03 sec) Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die... Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing...

1 0

[Dovecot] blank line at the top of mbox
by KB Digital 10 Apr '04

10 Apr '04

Hello, It seems dovecop pop3 server sometimes inserts a blank line at the top of the mbox. It only happens for certain users not all. I'm not sure why it's doing that. Looking back into the mailing list, I saw the same post in Oct 6, 2003 but there was no reply to it. Is there a patch or fix that i can use to get around the blank line? Thank you. Ken

2 1

[Dovecot] (no subject)
by Avery Day 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

Sorry if this question has been asked before I looked through some of the archives before posting this. I am considering using dovecot on a small 35 user enviorment (only around 6 gigs of email) that will be primarly be used with squirrelmail for the MUA. I have been using dovecot for a few weeks now and really like it. It is a big improvement over uw-imap thats for sure. I was wondering how many people in this mailing list are using dovecot for a production email server, and why you chose to use dovecot over cyrus or courier. Or maybe someone feels that dovecot isnt ready for this type of thing just yet. I am all ears so please feel free. Thanks -- Avery

2 1

[Dovecot] Re: Dovecot died due to some SSL related error
by rhr-dovecot＠batky-howell.com 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

(Sorry, just joined the list, can't reply in the original message from Feb 4.) > Hi, > Dovecot (pre-compiled version of Fedora Core 1, configured for Maildir) > is running fine for me since a few days. It happened now twice to me > that dovecot died with the following error message in /var/log/maillog: > > Feb 4 11:18:27 hundehuette imap-login: RAND_bytes() failed: > error:24064064:random number generator:SSLEAY_RAND_BYTES:PRNG not > seeded > Feb 4 11:18:27 hundehuette dovecot: Login process died too early - > shutting down > > As these previous log messages indicate the login was working before > without any problem: > Feb 4 11:02:37 hundehuette imap-login: Login: andrea [192.168.2.138] > Feb 4 11:05:56 hundehuette last message repeated 30 times > Feb 4 11:09:02 hundehuette last message repeated 15 times > Feb 4 11:12:08 hundehuette last message repeated 15 times > Feb 4 11:15:15 hundehuette last message repeated 15 times > Feb 4 11:18:21 hundehuette last message repeated 15 times > Feb 4 11:18:26 hundehuette last message repeated 12 times > > Dovecot is running as user "dovecot" who does not have a ~/.rnd file > > Any idea? > > Thanks, > Christof Hi, No idea, but I'm getting the same thing, at least once a day, sometimes several times a day. I tried putting a .rnd file in /var/libexec/dovecot, no help. - Fedora Core 1.0 - dovecot-0.99.10-6 - openssl-0.9.7a-23 - About 20 users, using pop, pops, imap, imaps. I had to run a cron job that checks every minute to see if dovecot is running, and restart it if it isn't. I'd love to get this figured out, though. I see another message about this in the list archives, at the end of January. I'll post if I find anything... Rob

1 1

[Dovecot] vmailmgr
by Alejandro Mery 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

hi, does dovecot supports vmailmgr authentication? any recomended reading? and, in a vmailmgr context, what are the benefits of dovecot over courier-imap or bincimap? Best regards, Alejandro Mery

1 0

[Dovecot] Dovecot startup at boottime fails
by Bavo De Ridder 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Hi, I am running dovecot 0.99.10.4 on SuSE 9. I installed it using apt-get from the gwdg repository. The dovecot service is configured to start at boottime in run level 3 and 5. However, it dies immediately with this error (/var/log/mail.err): dovecot: Login process died too early - shutting down Starting the service afterwords from a prompt as root with the command: /etc/init.d/dovecot start works without a glitch. Attached you can find my dovecot.conf and the startup script /etc/init.d/dovecot. I hope someone could shed some light on this issue.

3 6

[Dovecot] dovecot vs. cyrus IMAP?
by Jim Norton 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Hello all, I just learned about dovecot. I am currently using Cyrus IMAP/POP3 with Postfix on a Linux system. The one thing I don't like about Cyrus IMAP is that it doesn't support mail users who have accounts on the system. It uses it's own mailbox format and the users can't be regular system users. It would be nice to have an IMAP/POP3 server that can handle mail for users in /etc/passwd as well as the cyrus 'virtual' user type. Does dovecot only provide access to mail for users in /etc/passwd? Or can one setup email accounts for people that don't have accounts on the system ( in /etc/passwd )? Thanks, -- Jim Norton - http://www.jimnorton.org Recursion; n. see 'Recursion'

2 1

[Dovecot] username and password not from /etc/passwd
by Zoong Pham 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Can dovecot use usernames and passwords not from /etc/passwd and be able to read mails of an user whose username and password are in /etc/passwd ? For example: - Joe Bloke has a local Unix account joe on Unix server mail.example.com - Sendmail on mail.example.com accepts mails for joe(a)example.com and put them in /var/mail/joe - can dovecot use other username/password file or database or directory rather than /etc/passwd to authenticate Joe and let him (once logs in successfully) reading mails in /var/mail/joe ? Ideally, the usernames and passwords that dovecot uses are different with the ones in /etc/passwd. Say, username is joe.bloke(a)example.com That way, Joe doesn't need to know the username and password on the Unix server at all. In summary, I want to have IMAP usernames and passwords totally different from the local Unix usernames and passwords. And users use only IMAP usernames and passwords to read their mails. I use OpenBSD-3.4, Sendmail 8.12.9, dovecot-0.99.10p0 (pre-compiled packaged from OpenBSD). Thanks, Zoong Pham

2 1

Re: [Dovecot] Repeating downloads
by Brian T Glenn 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

[You have top-posted your message. Please refrain from doing so on technical mailing lists. It ruins the flow of the conversation as well as making archive difficult to read] [You have sent a personal reply to a mailing list message when it was not warranted. Please keep replies on the list so that everyone can benefit.] On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 04:27:01PM -0500, Paul Hanson may have written: > On Wednesday, April 07, 2004 1:14 PM Brian T Glenn wrote: > > That sounds about how POP3 works in my experience. How were you > > expecting it to behave differently? > > Well the only problem is that if they receive a new message, not only do you > get the new message but another copy of ALL messages on the server. A > scenario that I have not experienced with any other POP3 server/client > setup. The correct behavior should be to only download the new message. from doing a search on dovecot and uidl, it seems that dovecot supports these functions, which is the standard way for a pop3 server to announce unique checksums of messages. Whether or not your client software supports this is another matter. -- Brian T Glenn delink.net Internet Services

1 0

[Dovecot] Repeating downloads
by Paul Hanson 07 Apr '04

07 Apr '04

Hey- Just wanna say that I'm really happy with Dovecot, it has worked really well for my small operation. I do have a couple problems I'd just like to bring to everyone's attention for future bugfixes and if there is a solution available. I'm using dovecot-0.99.10-6 with a clean fedora core 1 install. I'm using primarily IMAP with OpenSSL, however a few people use POP3 (over SSL) with outlook 2002 clients. The problem is that with each send and receive another copy of all messages in their Inboxes are downloaded. I have tried closing outlook restarting it etc. nothing seems to help unless I tell outlook to remove all messages from the server then outlook responds with "messages that outlook was attempting to download are no longer on the server." And problem solved. Not a huge deal but others with similar setups may be experiencing the same problems. I have postfix for my MTA, every account uses Maildir. Attached is my dovecot.conf. Thanks a lot!!! -Paul

2 1

[Dovecot] Process died to early
by Steven Stern 07 Apr '04

07 Apr '04

Just went through this again today. Has anyone found a solution? ------------------------------------------------------ After several days of operation, POP connections fail to my server. The log message is Mar 27 15:51:46 ciscy dovecot: Login process died too early - shutting down Linux ciscy.sterndata.com 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl #1 Wed Feb 18 16:38:32 EST 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux ]# /usr/sbin/dovecot --version 0.99.10 # /etc/init.d/dovecot status dovecot (pid 6900) is running... Killing the dovecot process, deleting /var/lock/subys/dovecot, and restarting the process gets POP3 and IMAP working again. Suggestions? -- Steve

2 1

[Dovecot] Repeating downloads
by Paul Hanson 07 Apr '04

07 Apr '04

Sorry about the Spam with the dovecot.conf. Here is the intended message. Thanks!! Hey- Just wanna say that Im really happy with Dovecot, it has worked really well for my small operation. I do have a couple problems Id just like to bring to everyones attention for future bugfixes and if there is a solution available. Im using dovecot-0.99.10-6 with a clean fedora core 1 install. Im using primarily IMAP with OpenSSL, however a few people use POP3 (over SSL) with outlook 2002 clients. The problem is that with each send and receive another copy of all messages in their Inboxes are downloaded. I have tried closing outlook restarting it etc nothing seems to help unless I tell outlook to remove all messages from the server then outlook responds with messages that outlook was attempting to download are no longer on the server. And problem solved. Not a huge deal but others with similar setups may be experiencing the same problems. I have postfix for my MTA, every account uses Maildir. Attached is my dovecot.conf. Thanks a lot!!! -Paul

1 0

[Dovecot] dovecot with sendmail
by electron electron 06 Apr '04

06 Apr '04

Hello, Here is an issue. I am trying to make dovecot work with sendmail If I use the default conf file (default_mail_env = ) then the inbox is the file /var/mail/user and a mail folder is created in /home/user directory where it stores all additional imap folders. The problem with this is that I cant have subfolders. If I edit dovecot.conf file and enter default_mail_env = maildir:/var/mail/%1u/%u/Maildir then I can create subfolders, but new emails are not stored in INBOX, but the stay in /var/mail/user. In order to overcome this issue I used procmail .procmailrc: ---------- { :0 Maildir/ } ---------- So now all emails are stored in Maildir format and again with the default dovecot.conf file it works fine. I was wondering if there is an alternative way to do this, without using procmail..just editing the dovecot.conf file. Thank you Regards _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

2 1

[Dovecot] User authentication
by Pahlevanzadeh Mohsen 06 Apr '04

06 Apr '04

Hi. I installed IMP webmail. I had use MySQL authentication for IMAP. Can i use MySQL for dovecot-imap server? Please guide me.... Yours,Mohsen. ===== ---------DIGITAL SIGNATURE------------------- ///Mohsen Pahlevanzadeh//////// Network administrator & programmer My work phone is : +98216054096-7 My home phone is: +98213810146 My emails is m_pahlevanzadeh(a)yahoo.com My website is: http://webnegar.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/

2 1

[Dovecot] dovecot not staying up
by Brian T Glenn 06 Apr '04

06 Apr '04

I found one reference to this in the archives via google, but the assistance offered there did not resolve the problem. I am getting the following in the logs: Apr 5 10:21:25 ziegchen dovecot: Dovecot starting up Apr 5 10:21:26 ziegchen dovecot: Auth process died too early - shutting down Apr 5 10:21:26 ziegchen dovecot: child 30091 (auth) returned error 127 Apr 5 10:21:26 ziegchen imap-login: fd_send(-1) failed: Broken pipe This is with SSL on or off, I have tried building the source many different ways, but it behaves the same every time. I even copied the config from a working installation and tried it with that, but to no avail. Any insight would be appreciated. -- Brian T Glenn delink.net Internet Services

2 2

[Dovecot] dovecot not reconnecting to ldap after ldap restart
by Jared 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

I upgraded dovecot two weeks ago from 0.99.10-0.rc2 to 0.99.10.4-1woody1 (both from the woody backport packages from braincells.com) Dovecot is using LDAP on a separate machine for authentication. (through stunnel if it matters) At 4:00 am, the LDAP server stops, dumps the ldap database, and then starts back up. Because the LDAP server is stopped, anyone who tries to authenticate during the few seconds will be denied. This isn't a big deal since it's 4:00 am. However, twice in the past two weeks, it appears that if dovecot can't connect to the LDAP server, it loses the ability until dovecot is restarted. It's only happened since I upgraded, and it's only happened twice, presumably when someone was trying to check their mail at the precise moment the LDAP server is down. I get the following entry in mail.err: Mar 30 04:00:18 akbar dovecot-auth: LDAP: ldap_result() failed: Can't contact LDAP server Mar 30 04:00:19 akbar dovecot-auth: LDAP: Can't connect to server: localhost Mar 30 04:00:50 akbar last message repeated 36 times . . . The two times it has happened, ldap is responding properly (all other services we provide which use LDAP still work), stunnel on the dovecot machine is still running, and dovecot is still running, accepting IMAP and POP connections, but failing at the authentication phase. Is there some change or bug in dovecot which would make this happen? Or is there a problem with my set up? Thanks in advance for any ideas. -jared

3 4

[Dovecot] passwd-file maintenance by users, other options
by Mike Brown 04 Apr '04

04 Apr '04

I am using Dovecot to provide IMAP and IMAP+SSL service for my users, but am still using QPopper for POP3 service, wrapped with stunnel for POP3+SSL. I am hesitant to get rid of QPopper because it supports APOP, which encrypts authentication data (both where it is stored, and when it is transmitted), and because APOP passwords can be managed by the users themselves, via the popauth tool that they can run from their shell accounts. I'd like very much to use Dovecot for POP3, but would need to have it be comparable to APOP, where authentication does not involve having user passwords going across the wire in the clear, and especially I need for users to be able to maintain their passwords themselves, preferably with their status as a current user of the system being established without my intervention; I don't want to have to manually keep things in sync with /etc/passwd. Furthermore, it needs to have no conflicts with popular email clients including Mozilla, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora, so unusual authentication mechanisms are not really an option. I've RTFM at http://www.dovecot.org/doc/auth.txt but I don't know how to establish a separate passwd file that would satisfy the requirement that users be able to maintain their passwords themselves. And PAM is a complete mystery to me. So what do you all do? Is there a tutorial somewhere that would help? Thanks, M.

3 2

[Dovecot] Bug fix - message/rfc822 attachments
by Rick Jones 03 Apr '04

03 Apr '04

Greetings I've attached a patch that fixes a bug in Dovecot relating to rfc822 attachments. This problem shows up in Mulberry (which hammers the IMAP protocol more than most!). The problem is that FETCH BODY[n], where "n" is the number for the message/rfc822 part, returns the wrong information. It returns the message without the headers, whereas it should return the entire rfc822 attachment. FETCH BODY[n.MIME] doesn't appear to return the MIME headers for the part either. This happens because the find_part() function always steps down into the child when the type of the part is RFC822. It should only do this if the request is for a sub-part, or for HEADER. Otherwise it should stay at the current level. I have to say the IMAP protocol is a bit perverse in the way implicit nesting of rfc822 messages is handled, which is why this looks somewhat hacky. I don't see a nicer way though. The effect in Mulberry is that certain operations on rfc822 attachments don't work properly, in particular extracting the attachment into a separate message. It also affects message-digest format messages, which will completely lock up Mulberry if one is even present in a mailbox. (It may be that Dovecot itself hangs, I don't know. Once I found that the patch fixed both problems I didn't look any further :) Mulberry doesn't exhibit these problems with other IMAP servers. The attached patch is for the source code of 0.99.10.04. I've looked at the "latest" source, and there is no change in these lines of code, so I guess the bug is still there. -- Best regards Rick Jones

1 0

[Dovecot] SSL error and PostgreSQL
by eLgino 02 Apr '04

02 Apr '04

Hello there, Anyone have a Howto for me how i can configure dovecot to work with a PostgreSQL Database? (the docs are small), i want to use it with Exim4 and i have a error with SSL "imap-login: Can't load private key file /var/dovecot/ssl/private/imapd.pem: error:0906D06C:PEM routine:PEM_read_bio:no start line" i make my cert with this command (i don't like the included script :)) openssl req -nodes -new -x509 -keyout imapd.pem -out imapd.pem -days 3650 or openssl req -nodes -new -x509 -out imapd.pem -days 3650 the pem is file is in the right directory and have "a chmod 700,777 or 600" no one of the this will work. sorry for my poor english and thanks in advance

2 1

[Dovecot] Failed to create storage with data
by Tim Middleton 01 Apr '04

01 Apr '04

Switched from UW-IMAP to dovecot a little while ago. Worked through the namespace hell with current users. But now I've hit another problem I can't seem to figure out. Some webmail (squirrelmail) users noticed that when they tried to login they would jus get this error: ERROR: ERROR : Connection dropped by imap-server. Query: CAPABILITY I discovered in the mail logs the real error was like this: Apr 1 04:28:38 smaug imap(mcfletch): Invalid mbox file /var/mail/mcfletch: No such file or directory Apr 1 04:28:38 smaug imap(mcfletch): Failed to create storage with data: mbox:/var/mail/mcfletch And the error seems to be quite accurate. These are new logins seeing this error, which do not yet have an mbox file. So the question is, why is dovecot not able to deal with this situation? Searching google i saw the suggestoin to one preson that it was actually the ~/mail directory unable to be created, but this is not the case in my test above, as ~/mail already existed for that account. Directory permissions seem okay. /usr/mail is drwxrwxrwt (note: /var/mail is a symlink to /usr/mail on this system). The dovecot setup is fairly default. Platform is FreeBSD 4.9. Authentication is done via system password file. There's no problem accessing/modifying existing mailboxes. I put in a chron job to touch into existance any non-existing mailboxes for everyone in the passwd file periodically, which mostly eliminates the problem. But I'd still like to know why the server is having the problem, if anyone can make any suggestions. -- Tim Middleton | Cain Gang Ltd | "Are the gods not just?" "Oh no, child. x(a)veX.net | www.Vex.Net | What would become of us if they were?" (CSL)

1 0

[Dovecot] Mulberry problem
by Rick Jones 01 Apr '04

01 Apr '04

I've been chasing a problem with Mulberry which now actually seems to be a Dovecot server bug. The problem manifests itself when manipulating embedded rfc822 messages, and the analysis comes down to the fact that a FETCH BODY[2] command returns the same thing as FETCH BODY[2.1]. Both return just the text of the embedded message, whereas FETCH BODY[2] should return everything including the headers (this is what Cyrus Daboo came up with after looking at the Mulberry log). I'm not sure exactly what version of Dovecot I'm running, it's what comes with SME Server 6.0. Has this by any chance been fixed? I have another Mulberry problem which might be related, but I'll save that for another post :) -- Regards Rick Jones

1 0

[Dovecot] Rogue child imap processes when using Mac imap clients
by darren david 31 Mar '04

31 Mar '04

hi all- I am currently running dovecot 0.99.10p2 on OpenBSD-3.4-snapshot. It has been very stable, but I have recently noticed that I am having problems when checking IMAP-SSL mail with Mac OS X clients. There are not problems using Mozilla or Outlook on Windows, but Mac clients (Thunderbird, Mozilla, Mail.app) all exhibit the same behavior - they can check and send mail, but I end up with a single, rogue child imap process on the server that pins the cpu that i have to 'kill -9' to clear out. Is this a Mac problem or a Dovecot problem? I'm not even sure what to look for in the logs... Thanks, Darren David

6 9

[Dovecot] New indexing code
by Timo Sirainen 31 Mar '04

31 Mar '04

Sorry about the lack of replies to questions in this list. Work on the new indexing code has taken way too long, but it's finally beginning to be get near usable state. After it's fully working, I'll start being more active here again. If you're interested (as a developer, normal users shouldn't even try playing with it yet), you can checkout "newdove" module from Dovecot CVS. Many things are still broken, but basic maildir support is almost working with the exception of expunges (which probably break badly) and custom flags (not implemented). And the maildir syncing code isn't optimized yet. Don't try it with any of your real maildirs, it might lose your mails. Some of the new great things in it: - Mailbox API which is a lot more easier to use than before, allowing a lot of things that previously were difficult to implement - Less IMAP-specific than before - Should work extremely well with shared mailboxes with tons of users I'm hoping to get a usable alpha release out of it within few weeks.

2 1

[Dovecot] Fatal: RAND_bytes() failed
by Anders Nielsen 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

This morning dovecot died with the following messages in the errorlog. Any solution to this problem? I am using Fedora Core 1 on a SMP i686 box. imap-login: Mar 30 08:08:00 Fatal: RAND_bytes() failed: error:24064064:random number generator:SSLEAY_RAND_BYTES:PRNG not seeded dovecot: Mar 30 08:08:00 Error: Login process died too early - shutting down dovecot: Mar 30 08:08:00 Error: child 21354 (login) returned error 89 Best regards Anders Nielsen -- Anders Nielsen <anielsen(a)diku.dk>

2 1

[Dovecot] (no subject)
by tom＠replic8.net 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

hello, suddenly, dovecot stopped working. login succeeds, then no mail is displayed to the user. i upgraded to latest nightly, no change. ==snip== Mar 30 10:17:31 commbox imap-login: Login: user [192.168.99.66] Mar 30 10:17:31 commbox imap(user): Buffer full (49) Mar 30 10:17:31 commbox dovecot: child 745 (imap) killed with signal 6 ==snap== some minutes later i tried another client - i was using php-based horde/imp webmail system first (php uses cclient2000 for imap which is based on uw-imap afaik) - using syslphed-0.99 things work fine. strange. any hints on how to debug this more? -- thanks, TOM

1 0

[Dovecot] error starting dovecot
by Avery Day 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

I am running redhat 9.0. I have been using uw-imap for some time now and wanted to try our dovecot. After installing dovecot and trying to start it up I am getting an error ------------------- Starting IMAP daemon (dovecot): Fatal: Can't use SSL certificate /usr/share/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem: No such file or directory ------------------- Thanks for any help.

2 2

[Dovecot] UW-IMAP -> Dovecot : patch to remove nasty "internal messages" from UW-IMAP ?
by Xavier Beaudouin 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

Hello there, We want to move from UW-IMAP to Dovecot (mbox format), works like a charm, but UW-IMAP has that bloody habbit to make a stupid message in all his mailbox files : From MAILER-DAEMON Thu Apr 19 10:30:01 2001 Date: 19 Apr 2001 10:30:01 +0200 From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON(a)mailhub2-vil.isdnet.net> Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA Message-ID: <987669001(a)mailhub2-vil.isdnet.net> X-IMAP: 0987630138 0000000001 Status: RO This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system software. If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created with the data reset to initial values. Is there any patch / trick / whatever to avoid that such "stupid" message to be not served by dovecot ? Thanks, /Xavier

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[Dovecot] IMAP error with squirrelmail - how to debug?
by Raymond Scholz 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

When moving messages with squirrelmail (or kmail), I get the following error: ERROR : Could not complete request. Query: COPY 3 "INBOX" Reason Given: Unexpected EOF According to the config I switched on rawlog: # This would write rawlogs into ~/dovecot.rawlog/ directory: mail_executable = /usr/lib/dovecot/rawlog /usr/lib/dovecot/imap rawlog.c was altered in order to have /tmp as HOME. But I see no logfiles being generated. Environment: lastest dovecot from CVS, vpopmail and local users (error with both types). Another issue: Ocassionally the auth process dies: Feb 26 21:08:49 servername dovecot: child 28641 (auth) killed with signal 11 Cheers, Ray -- Raymond Scholz - rscholz(a)zonix.de - GnuPG/PGP - http://www.zonix.de/

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[Dovecot] dovecot tls configuration
by Johannes Berg 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

Hi, I looked through the web and the list archives, but couldn't find how to set up the following: - dovecot with ssl/tls enabled - login from localhost allowed with and without tls - login from remote hosts only allowed via tls Is that possible at all? I'm using debian/unstable so its version 0.99.10.4-3. Thanks, johannes -- http://www.sipsolutions.de/ Key-ID: 9AB78CA5 Johannes Martin Berg <johannes(a)sipsolutions.de>

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[Dovecot] Process died to early
by Steven Stern 28 Mar '04

28 Mar '04

After several days of operation, POP connections fail to my server. The log message is Mar 27 15:51:46 ciscy dovecot: Login process died too early - shutting down Linux ciscy.sterndata.com 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl #1 Wed Feb 18 16:38:32 EST 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux ]# /usr/sbin/dovecot --version 0.99.10 # /etc/init.d/dovecot status dovecot (pid 6900) is running... Killing the dovecot process, deleting /var/lock/subys/dovecot, and restarting the process gets POP3 and IMAP working again. Suggestions? -- Steve

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[Dovecot] RE: Lock problem - take 2
by Alex S Moore 21 Mar '04

21 Mar '04

I deleted the index folder to fix a lock problem described on my previous post. I still cannot access the folder. Now, I have a file in the maildir folder named dovecot-uidlist.lock that must be corrupt. How do I fix this? I can remove this particular maildir folder and there is no great loss. But I want to know how to fix it, in case this problem occurs on an important folder. Thanks, Alex

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[Dovecot] RE: Locking problem
by Alex S Moore 20 Mar '04

20 Mar '04

Running dovecot on Solaris 8 sparc with SylpheedClaws as the MUA. I tried moving to many messages from a folder to my maildir folder, which is a local directory on the dovecot server. Now, I cannot open the folder due to this message: 'Mar 20 10:26:15 sws601.mcsun.local imap(amoore): [ID 702911 mail.error] Timeout while waiting for release of shared fcntl() lock for index file /var/indexes//amoore/.Spam.Spam Archive/.imap.index' How do I get the lock released? I changed some timeout settings in dovecot.conf, but that did not help. Every time that I click this particular folder in my MUA, the screen locks up. Thanks, Alex

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[Dovecot] Case insensitive user names
by andrew fresh 20 Mar '04

20 Mar '04

I am trying to set up the Dovecot pop3 server for some virtual hosting I am doing and it is going well, I am generating a passwd file that points dovecot to the virtual users mailspool. The only thing that I don't have working is that my current pop3 server (NTMail) has case insensitve usernames. Dovecot doesn't. I was hoping there was just an option to turn on, but I didn't see one, and unfortunately I don't know enough C to change to lc($submitted_user) eq lc($database_user) like I would in perl :-) I do have control over generating the passwd file, and it is currently generating the users to lowecase in the file, so just lc($submitted_user) eq $database_user would work well enough. Unfortunately I don't know enough C to do that, so I thought I would ask if anyone has done this. So, does anyone have any ideas on how to do this? Thank you, -- andrew /---------------------------------------------------------------------\ | ICQ# | Proud Member of Mad-Techies.org | | 253198 | http://www.mad-techies.org | |---------------------------------------------------------------------| | There are two ways to write error-free programs; | | only the third one works. | \---------------------------------------------------------------------/

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[Dovecot] chdir() on NFS
by Christian Andersen 19 Mar '04

19 Mar '04

Hi, I'm having problems accessing home directories though NFS. This setup uses LDAP and Kerberos. Users defined on the local host work fine. This is what dovecot writes in the logs while trying to log in as the user johndoe: ---- Mar 19 14:10:54 jack dovecot-auth: nss_ldap: reconnecting to LDAP server... Mar 19 14:10:54 jack dovecot-auth: nss_ldap: reconnected to LDAP server after 1 attempt(s) Mar 19 14:10:54 jack imap-login: Login: johndoe [10.0.0.30] Mar 19 14:10:54 jack dovecot: chdir(/home/johndoe) failed: Permission denied Mar 19 14:10:54 jack dovecot: child 3525 (imap) returned error 89 ---- The authentication is OK, but dovecot fails to get access to the home directory. What username does dovecot try to chdir() as? If I 'su' from to that user I have access to /home/johndoe, and a quick test with Courier IMAP worked fine. Postfix has no problem delivering mail in the users maildir using procmail. Some relevant config options: default_mail_env = maildir:~/mail:INDEX=/var/indexes/%n auth_userdb = passwd auth_passdb = pam auth_user = root -- Christian Andersen <http://phuzz.org>

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RE: [Dovecot] Dovecot failing silently on startup
by Julian Melville 19 Mar '04

19 Mar '04

> Can you do an strace of a running dovecot process so we can > get a better idea? (You ought to cc the list as well.) Sorry for the slow reply, it's taken me a few days to get back to this and observe the problem again. I've placed a tarball of the output of "strace -ff -o dovecot dovecot" here: http://rimu.tiddly-pom.com/dovecot-strace.tar.gz To my (admittedly untrained) eye, it's looking for and not finding /etc/ld.so.nohwcap, and then repeatedly not finding /var/run/dovecot/ssl-parameters.dat. At that point there is a /var/run/dovecot/ssl-parameters.dat.tmp - is that where the SSL stuff is being generated? Is it just that Dovecot is stalled until the ssl-parameters.dat file appears? Thanks, Julian.

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[Dovecot] duplicate mails
by Neal D. Becker 18 Mar '04

18 Mar '04

I run kmail and use it to automatically sort my mails to various imap folders (using kmail's disconnected imap). If I fire up a second instance of kmail (e.g., @work + @home) then both will do this, and I wind up with 2 copies of each mail. Can dovecot be taught to discard duplicate mail ids, or maybe some other mechanism to avoid this problem?

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[Dovecot] triggering multiple actions on pop-3 request
by Eric S. Johansson 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

I want to trigger fetchmail when a user makes a pop-3 request. The reason for this is so that the messages retrieved by fetchmail can be filtered via an anti spam service before depositing them into the inbox. The way I figure it, since I need to know who the user is and that they authenticated in order to make the correct fetchmail call, I need to spawn the fetchmail process somewhere between the authentication and the pop 3 process. since I'm currently unfamiliar with code at that level, could I get a suggestion as to where to start looking?. apologies if I haven't explained is clearly enough. I'm still just kind of exploring the idea myself to see if it's the right way to approach this problem (pop 3 anti spam Gateway). If it works out right, it may even end up as part of a firewall (IPCop) as a way of making anti spam trivially easy for the technically challenged. (I.e. put it in a box, said it up right, don't let them touch it) I know it is also somewhat off topic for the group but since I want to modify dovecot (the IMAP server that rescued me from UW), I figured I would give it a shot. thanks in advance, ---eric

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