- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] Login issue
by "M. Tolga Özses" 08 Jun '06

08 Jun '06

Hi, I have a login issue. I do everything I can think of, but can't login. My .conf file is at http://kabuto.kunduz.org/dovecot.conf and I make slight changes everytime I try a new thing. I last set disable_plaintext_auth to yes and when I try to login using Thunderbird, I get *Code:* Sending of username did not succeed. Mail server mail.somedomain.org responded: Plaintext authentication disabled. , and dovecot.log reads *Code:* Info: pop3-login: Login failed: Plaintext authentication disabled: method=PLAIN, rip=212.98.201.1, lip=192.168.1.2. When I set disable_plaintext_auth to no and try again, I get *Code:* Sending of password did not succeed. Mail server mail.somedomain.org responded: Authentication failed and dovecot.log reads *Code:* dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:45 Info: auth(default): client in: AUTH 1 PLAIN service=POP3 lip=192.168.1.2 rip=212.98.201.1 resp=<hidden> dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:45 Info: auth(default): client out: CONT 1 dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:45 Info: auth(default): client in: CONT<hidden> dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:45 Info: auth(default): pam(kabuto,212.98.201.1): pam_authenticate() failed: Authentication failure dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:46 Info: auth(default): client out: FAIL 1 user=kabuto dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:47 Info: auth(default): client in: AUTH 2 PLAIN service=POP3 lip=192.168.1.2 rip=212.98.201.1 resp=<hidden> dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:47 Info: auth(default): pam(kabuto,212.98.201.1): pam_authenticate() failed: Authentication failure dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:48 Info: auth(default): client out: FAIL 2 user=kabuto dovecot: Jun 07 16:05:51 Info: pop3-login: Disconnected: user=<kabuto>, method=PLAIN, rip=212.98.201.1, lip=192.168.1.2 Can you help me with this? Sorry that it is long, but it was the only way to describe completely. Best regards,

3 3

RE: [Dovecot] Using MySQL to store email?
by Joshua Goodall 08 Jun '06

08 Jun '06

Marc Perkel scribbled: > Repeat after me - think outside the box. Did you miss the part where I said we've already tried this? Not only have we thought outside the box, but we've smashed it up and built several alternatives to see which one sucked the least. Turns out, SQL backends suck the most. Please try to keep up :) Marc Perkel also scribbled: > To do this with MySQL would be trivial. To do it without a database > isn't possible. Actually you could do that with a tiny Sieve extension. I don't think you really understand what you are even proposing. Your statement would be better phrased "to do it without an index would be slow". If you wanted to create a database server for mail, with a mail-specific query language, then that database might be called "Dovecot", and the query language might be called "IMAP". Innovation is not an excuse for lousy engineering. As usual, it turns out to be bad design practice to say "let's deploy shinytoy for feature X!" rather than say "we need capability X! What's a creative way to achieve that?". Which is why necessity is the mother of invention. /JG

1 0

RE: [Dovecot] Using MySQL to store email?
by Joshua Goodall 07 Jun '06

07 Jun '06

Marc Perkel: > Suppose I want to move all message from a specific host to another folder. > UPDATE table SET folder=new-folder WHERE host=value; > > With databases you can do things you would have to write complex programs > to do with files. Things that you would consider to be impossible are > trivial with databases. > > This outside the box. People who optimise their systems for shiny cute features rather than the common case get all the hacks they deserve. Repeat after me: design for the common case. Also your proposed sql above and implications (arbitrary operations based on mail metadata i.e. headers) seems to involve indexing every mail header on delivery. Good luck with that one large scale mail storage. Did you want a mail database, or an OLAP system? >-) /jg

3 2

RE: [Dovecot] Using MySQL to store email?
by Joshua Goodall 07 Jun '06

07 Jun '06

Marc Perkel trolled: > So Timo, > > Have you considered the idea of storing all the email in a MySQL > database? Seems to me that MySQL could somplify all the backend stuff > that everyone struggles with and with replication one could create very > massive and reliable systems. What would it take to use MySQL that way? Maybe we could recode Dovecot in PHP, too. Sorry, that was nasty. However, having recently experimented with a very large mail storage system using mysql, I strongly advise against this avenue. In particular, the two main backends have serious deficiencies when you get up to the multi-gigabyte ranges: * MyISAM doesn't restart in constant time. * InnoDB's next-key locking kills performance on large blob inserts & deletes. Anyway, what do you mean, everyone struggles with backends? Dovecot's backends are fast, modular and reliable. Regarding replication; all good logical volume managers can do this. Regarding massive; all good filesystems can do this. Regarding reliable; I guarantee that mysql reliability (when properly managed) is still lower than that of a filesystem (when properly managed). In fact, the whole argument is specious. Filesystems already are databases, optimised for storing arbitrary-sized data objects using a hierarchical key, which is practically the definition of mail storage. /jg

2 1

[Dovecot] Dspam Plugin
by Timothy White 07 Jun '06

07 Jun '06

Johannes, do you have any plans (regarding your dspam plugin) to: a) Integrate it into libdspam rather than calling the dspam binary? b) Any ideas for scaling it better, and implementing it scaled better? I notice a slight discussion about scaling, and you have chosen not to pursue it. Is that because it's too hard, or just because you don't need to? Thanks Tim p.s. If I knew how to use the libdspam stuff, I'd make the changes myself... I might have to learn ;-) -- Linux Counter user #273956

2 1

[Dovecot] Dovecot configure script for 1.0b8 not including SQL drivers?
by Will Buik 06 Jun '06

06 Jun '06

On 6/5/06, grant beattie <grant(a)grunta.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 05:57:36PM -0400, Will Buik wrote: > > > I am having a problem with the configure script for Dovecot 1.0b8. It > > doesn't seem to be compiling in sql engine driver support. I have > > specified --with-sql and --with-pgsql but when the script is done it > > says "Building with SQL drivers ..............:" but lists no drivers > > afterwards. I tried compiling it anyway but it logs the error " > > auth(default): Unknown database driver 'pgsql' " so the it defiantly > > didn't get compiled in. My pgsql includes and libs are in a non > > standard location but I specified that in the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS > > before the ./configure invocation. What have I done wrong here, or is > > there a bug in the script? > > > > The whole invocation is: > > CPPFLAGS='-I/usr/local/openssl-0.9.8b/include > > -I/usr/local/pgsql-8.1.4/include' > > LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/openssl-0.9.8b/lib -L/usr/local/pgsql-8.1.4/lib' > > ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/dovecot-1.0b8 > > --sysconfdir=/etc/dovecot --localstatedir=/var --with-ioloop=eooll > > --with-notify=dnotify --without-pop3d --with-storages=maildir > > --with-sql --with-pgsql --with-gnu-ld > > what does config.log say? and does it report any problems with > finding openssl? > > the problem may be that the shared libraries can't be found at > runtime, in which case you will need to set the rpath in the binaries > that are built. you didn't mention which platform/compiler you're > using, but this is done using the -Wl,-R<directory> argument for gcc > and Sun Studio compiler/Solaris ld, at least (-Wl passes the next > argument to the linker, -R tells the linker to include this path in the > binary's rpath). > > grant. I looked at the config.log file and it doesn't look like it's having any problems with openssl, but when I looked for pgsql I got what looked like some errors. configure:29296: checking for PQconnectdb in -lpq | char PQconnectdb (); | PQconnectdb (); ac_cv_lib_pq_PQconnectdb=no /usr/local/pgsql-8.1.4/lib/libpq.so: undefined reference to `dlerror' /usr/local/pgsql-8.1.4/lib/libpq.so: undefined reference to `dlclose' /usr/local/pgsql-8.1.4/lib/libpq.so: undefined reference to `dlopen' /usr/local/pgsql-8.1.4/lib/libpq.so: undefined reference to `dlsym'

2 1

Re: [Dovecot] Using MySQL to store email?
by nodata 06 Jun '06

06 Jun '06

> On 06-06-2006 15:48:20 +0200, nodata wrote: >> Putting everything in a database would provide one benefit: >> * Less storage space needed due to duplicated e-mail > > ... assuming that the mails are completely identical (i.e. have no slightly different headers) and that the database backend does expensive duplicate elimination on its string heaps. Yes, like Exchange does (unless you did something "clever" with the headers). > So the real benefit you get I think is: > * full text searching capabilities based on the IR-like indices > provided/maintained by the database backend, such as for instance: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/fulltext-query-expansion.html If the original poster if struggling with a filesystem version of dovecot, and wants to create "massive and reliable systems" using MySQL, then he's going to have trouble. Adding MySQL won't do that.

1 0

[Dovecot] vpopmail
by C J Kenneth Tan -- OptimaNumerics 06 Jun '06

06 Jun '06

I was running 1.0.beta3 code with no problems. I recently switched to 1.0.beta8 and I noticed that vpopmail's pop-before-smtp functionality stopped working. I am using vpopmail authentication. Has anyone else encountered this problem? Thank you. Kenneth Tan ----------------------------------------------------------------------- C J Kenneth Tan, PhD OptimaNumerics Ltd Telephone: +44 798 941 7838 E-mail: cjtan(a)OptimaNumerics.com Telephone: +44 207 099 4428 Web: http://www.OptimaNumerics.com Facsimile: +44 207 100 4572 -----------------------------------------------------------------------

8 24

[Dovecot] Procmail and dovecot interactions
by Jeff Turner 06 Jun '06

06 Jun '06

Hi, I'm using procmail to deliver to Maildir directories: DEFAULT=${HOME}/Maildir/ I notice dovecot keeps a 'dovecot-uidlist' plus cache and index files, in each maildir. How is it that dovecot keeps these up to date when the contents of cur/ keeps changing? Is dovecot scanning cur/ every so often checking for changes? Isn't this slow for large folders (100k+)? I note on the Dovecot LDA page[1], that it keeps the "Dovecot index base up to date". Does this mean Dovecot isn't expected to work properly with a delivery agent which doesn't know about its indexes? Cheers, Jeff [1] http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA

2 2

[Dovecot] Dovecot configure script for 1.0b8 not including SQL drivers?
by Will Buik 06 Jun '06

06 Jun '06

I am having a problem with the configure script for Dovecot 1.0b8. It doesn't seem to be compiling in sql engine driver support. I have specified --with-sql and --with-pgsql but when the script is done it says "Building with SQL drivers ..............:" but lists no drivers afterwards. I tried compiling it anyway but it logs the error " auth(default): Unknown database driver 'pgsql' " so the it defiantly didn't get compiled in. My pgsql includes and libs are in a non standard location but I specified that in the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS before the ./configure invocation. What have I done wrong here, or is there a bug in the script? The whole invocation is: CPPFLAGS='-I/usr/local/openssl-0.9.8b/include -I/usr/local/pgsql-8.1.4/include' LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/openssl-0.9.8b/lib -L/usr/local/pgsql-8.1.4/lib' ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/dovecot-1.0b8 --sysconfdir=/etc/dovecot --localstatedir=/var --with-ioloop=eooll --with-notify=dnotify --without-pop3d --with-storages=maildir --with-sql --with-pgsql --with-gnu-ld Thanks in advance.

2 1

[Dovecot] Maildir, procmail, and locks
by Mark Nienberg 05 Jun '06

05 Jun '06

I'm using procmail as the local delivery agent for Maildir style mailboxes. I discovered that I was able to send mail to other users but was unable to send mail to myself. Examples from verbose procmail log: **** Successful message to another user **** procmail: [24589] Fri Jun 2 15:03:34 2006 procmail: Assigning "PATH=/home/david/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin" procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=/home/david/Maildir/new/msg.4AAdC" procmail: Opening "/home/david/Maildir/new/msg.4AAdC" procmail: Acquiring kernel-lock procmail: Notified comsat: "david@0:/home/david/Maildir/new/msg.4AAdC" From mark.nienberg(a)tippingmar.com Fri Jun 2 15:03:34 2006 Subject: test to other user Folder: /home/david/Maildir/new/msg.4AAdC **** Failed message to myself **** procmail: [24596] Fri Jun 2 15:05:13 2006 procmail: Assigning "PATH=/home/mark/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin" procmail: Couldn't create or rename temp file "/home/mark/Maildir/new/msg.A" procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=/var/mail/mark" procmail: Opening "/var/mail/mark" procmail: Acquiring kernel-lock procmail: Notified comsat: "mark@686:/var/mail/mark" From mark.nienberg(a)tippingmar.com Fri Jun 2 15:05:13 2006 Subject: test to self Folder: /var/mail/mark Anyway, I changed dovecot's lock_method from the default fcntl to flock and the problem disappeared. I'll add this to the wiki unless someone points out an error in my method. Mark Nienberg

3 8

[Dovecot] Re: Expunge is not expunging unless called twice--revisited
by Glenn Leavell 05 Jun '06

05 Jun '06

On Tue May 30 05:45:12 EEST 2006, Jeff Blank jb000002 at mr-happy.com wrote: > Hi, > > I'm running dovecot-1.0.beta8 from FreeBSD ports, using mbox mail > store. My problem appears to have come up on the list about a month > ago, "Expunge is not expunging unless it is called twice". I ran > through Bill Boebel's telnet-IMAP session for myself, and I see that > his test case is now fixed (as Timo said), but mutt, for whatever > reason, uses +FLAGS.SILENT, and I'm still getting the behaviour in > Bill's original problem when I telnet and use +FLAGS.SILENT: > > 1 OK Logged in. > 2 select INBOX > * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft) > * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)] > * Flags permitted. > * 1 EXISTS > * 1 RECENT > * OK [UNSEEN 1] First unseen. > * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1148956034] UIDs valid > * OK [UIDNEXT 4] Predicted next UID > 2 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed. > 3 UID STORE 3 +FLAGS.SILENT (\Deleted) > 3 OK Store completed. > 4 expunge > 4 OK Expunge completed. > 5 expunge > * 1 EXPUNGE > * 0 RECENT > 5 OK Expunge completed. > > After step 4, the message is still in the mailbox with "X-Status: D"; > the second expunge is required to remove it. I seem to get the same > behaviour with Thunderbird, so is this still a dovecot problem? (I > have Thunderbird set up to remove deleted messages immediately, not > move to trash or just mark as deleted.) I'm also still experiencing the twice-needed expunge problem (with mutt and +FLAGS.SILENT) just as Jeff described it. I have the problem both with Beta8 and with last night's CVS snapshot. I'm using Maildir. Thanks very much, Glenn

2 1

[Dovecot] Dovecot + Logcheck Regex
by Rik Wade 05 Jun '06

05 Jun '06

I'm using logcheck for log reporting on Debian Etch, and am currently getting a lot of log entries from Syslog falling through the standard logcheck regex filters. I'm running Dovecot 1.0beta8. The filters follow: ^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ (imap|pop3)-login: Login: [.[:alnum:]@-]+ \[(::ffff:)?[:0-9a-f.]+\]$ ^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ (dovecot: )?(imap|pop3)-login: Disconnected \[(::ffff:)?[:0-9a-f.]+\]$ ^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ (dovecot: )?(imap|pop3)$[^[:space:]]+$: File isn't in mbox format: [^[:space:]]+$ # dovecot 1.0 ^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ dovecot: (imap|pop3)-login: Login: user=<[.[:alnum:]@-]+>, method=(PLAIN|plain|LOGIN|login|(CRAM|cram|DIGEST|digest)-(MD5|md5)), rip=(::ffff:)?[:.[:digit:]]+, lip=(::ffff:)?[:0-9a-f.]+(, TLS)?$ The type of entry coming through is: Jun 5 09:05:57 myhostname dovecot: IMAP(myusername): Disconnected for inactivity Jun 5 09:07:05 myhostname dovecot: IMAP(myusername): Disconnected: Logged out Jun 5 09:07:05 myhostname dovecot: IMAP(myusername): Disconnected: Logged out The first alnum pattern doesn't match given a host name, but the messages given by Dovecot do not appear to be catered for in the logcheck files. I wondered whether anyone on the dovecot list was also using logcheck and had fixed the regex patterns? -- rik

1 0

[Dovecot] Specifying with openssl to use
by Chase 05 Jun '06

05 Jun '06

I'm trying to setup dovecot on Solaris 10. I can get it all working except TLS/SSL. I traced my problem down to the version of openssl that Solaris 10 ships with. The fix is supposed to be to use a newer version of openssl. Without removing the built-in version of openssl I've installed openssl-0.9.8b to /usr/local. When I "./configure" dovecot it seems to always pick up the broken version of openssl in /usr/sfw. How do I make dovecot use an alternate copy of openssl? How is it even finding the one in /usr/sfw? Thanks, -Chase I tried setting CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS already.

3 4

[Dovecot] Since Updating Dovecot - Problem by connecting with Client
by Mailing 04 Jun '06

04 Jun '06

Hi, in the last days I've updated my dovecot on my Gentoo System. Before all went fine. Since the update it doesn't work in any way. After the Update my Thunderbird Client says: The Connecction could not proceeded because it was rejected. Another message was, that I should use TLS or SSL to connect. I've not changed my config - probably the update does - and it's only a simple configuration in my home-network. Has anybody an idea which is causing the problem? the config looks like this: protocols = imap imaps listen = [::] default_mail_env = maildir:%h/.mail mechanism = plain Thx for help k1x

3 3

[Dovecot] imaps multiple domains proposal
by Jim Flowers 04 Jun '06

04 Jun '06

There was a thread earlier this year that noted a difficulty in modifying dovecot to handle multiple domain certificates. This is a proposal that may require only minor modifications. Virtual domains can be set up with a unique ip address for each server; mail.domain1.tld ###.###.###.1, mail.domain2.tld ###.###.###.2, etc. Users are instructed to enter 'mail.domain?.tld' for their imap server. When an SSL TCP connection is established on port 993, the server program will know the IP # that was used for the connection and can use getnameinfo to extract the domain name (%d). This can then be used to build a specific reference to the certificate to be used, prior to responding to CLIENT_HELLO. Something like /etc/ssl/%d/[certs|private]/dovecot.pem One technique would be to include this in multiple dovecot.conf listen parameters read on startup, similar to tpop3d: listen = ###.###.###.1:993(domain1.tld);tls=stls,\ /etc/ssl/domain1.tld/certs/dovecot.pem,\ /etc/ssl/domain1.tld/private/dovecot.pem listen = ###.###.###.2:993(domain2.tld);tls=stls,\ /etc/ssl/domain2.tld/certs/dovecot.pem,\ /etc/ssl/domain2.tld/private/dovecot.pem Alternatively, as virtual servers almost always use some form of lookup (in my case mysql) the certificate used could be determined at time of connection, similar to the way ssl_ca is handled. For example: user_query = SELECT '125'as uid, '125' as gid, maildir as home, '/etc/ssl/%d/certs/dovecot.pem' as cert, '/etc/ssl/%d/private/dovecot.pem as priv FROM mailbox WHERE username = '%u' In this manner the certificate returned would match the server ip/FQDN and can also be customized for the specific domain involved. Seeing their own domain name as the CN for both the certificate and CA goes a long way to establish credibility for most secure email users. Could this be done? -- Jim Flowers<jflowers(a)ezo.net>

4 5

[Dovecot] "Bug" report (and patch)
by Soren Hansen 03 Jun '06

03 Jun '06

1 0

[Dovecot] outlook express 6 imap client workaround
by david williams 03 Jun '06

03 Jun '06

My outlook express users connecting with imap are having issues with client timeout. The wiki says to add oe6-fetch-no-newmail, but when I add that workaround I get this error in the logs: Jun 2 10:00:13 mail dovecot: IMAP(username): Unknown client workaround: oe6-fetch-no-newmail I'm using 1.0b7. Any ideas?

3 2

Re[2]: [Dovecot] dovecot can't start!
by Oleg D. 02 Jun '06

02 Jun '06

MB> Hmmm... I was seeing a problem rather like this with 1.0beta8 under Solaris MB> with Sun's compiler: only it was with the IMAP protocol rather than POP. MB> The problem there was an assumption Tio had made that everyone was using a MB> C99-compatible compiler. Apparently this handles some aspects of variable MB> initialisation differently from earlier C compilers. MB> In my case adding a command-line option to the C compiler to flip it into MB> C99 mode seemed to solve the problem. The option for our compiler was MB> "-xc99" -- however if your compiler has such an option it may have a MB> different name. If you check the manual page for your C compiler you may MB> find an equivalent option to try. MB> However another solution was provided by Timo in the form of a simple patch MB> that made changes to a couple of source files. I hope Timo doesn't mind: MB> I'm re-sending his patch as an attachment to this message as it is tiny. MB> You could try applying it and rebuilding Dovecot. MB> Cheers, MB> Mike Brudenell But I use FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE-p15 with native compiler. Really nobody has this problem on freebsd? And the main - Why I can't start dovecot without SSL :) Why I see in log "pop3-login: BUG: SSL initialization parameters not given while they should have been" even if I have "ssl_disable = yes" in dovecot.conf 1.0b3 works fine. This problem is main for me because I don't want to use SSL. -- Best regards, Oleg mailto:dzoleg@rsute.ru

4 6

[Dovecot] Duplicate Attachments....
by Charles Marcus 02 Jun '06

02 Jun '06

Love Dovecot, many thanks for it! But, I have a question regarding the storing of emails, with respect to efficiency... Our business model (advertising industry) is such that our users exchange a lot of emails with attachments - most less than a megabyte, but some considerably larger. Consequently, I have been looking for a good, open source imap server that doesn't store multiple copies of the same attachment - but instead, stores a checksum, and whenever a message is stored with a duplicate attachment, the attachment is stored only once, and simply referenced by some kind of link to other emails. This would *drastically* reduce the storage requirements for our company - imagine a message with a 10MB attachment, sent to 40 of our users, sometimes more than once. Now multiply this by 3 times per day, for 5 years... Are there any plans for Dovecot to support this type of storage in the future? Does this require the use of an SQL DB for storing the message components? -- Best regards, Charles

9 14

[Dovecot] Platform change, considerations?
by Peter Lindgren 02 Jun '06

02 Jun '06

Hello! I am switching hardware platform for my dovecot 1.0beta3 installation. From Sun Sparc (SS4) to Intel i386. OS platform will only change from OpenBSD 3.7 to 3.9. From Dovecot 1.0beta3 to beta8. Is there anything special to consider, in terms of endianness or other incompatibilities? I plan on a fresh install (compile) on the new machine, migrate the settings manually (by hand), test the new server and then migrate old mail. Can I just mount the disks and copy, or should I go through NFS to be safe from potential endianness problems? Or perhaps copy with IMAP using my Thunderbird client? The live switch (the old server is in production) isn't that delicate, several hours downtime is OK. There's a backup server that can receive any mail I might loose during downtime, which can be copied though IMAP later. Thanks for any input! /Peter -- Peter Lindgren, dataingenjör E-post: peter "at" norrskenkonsult punkt com http://www.norrskenkonsult.com

2 1

[Dovecot] Outlook causes BIG dovecot index problem (beta 8, outlook 2003)
by Casey Allen Shobe 01 Jun '06

01 Jun '06

Hey all, Well, I typed up all the below, then managed to fix the problem before sending this to the list. I'll send it anyways, in case anybody else is affected by it (and because it does indicate a definite bug in Dovecot's experimental Kerberos support). The fix is to recompile without kerberos enabled, and to take gssapi out of the auth methods in the config (the latter alone may or may not be enough of a fix on it's own, I didn't try it without recompiling). I'm guessing that Outlook attempts to use Kerberos authentication by default or something and silently fails and uses other auth methods, and that any attempt to use Kerberos is in fact what hoses the server. However I have not done any further testing against beta8 with a Kerberos-enabled client such as KMail, so I leave this as an exercise for the next adventurer. I'm also uncertain as to why this problem does not manifest on our main servers, which also have Kerberos enabled (and Outlook 2003 clients). Or /had/ anyways, as I'm disabling Kerberos support as we speak as a preventative measure. Here's the problem description: I've been running dovecot happily for many months on our production mail servers hosting about 600 accounts, with no problems. People use every mail client under the sun - Apple Mail, Outlook 97|2000|XP|2003, Outlook Express, Mutt, Thunderbird, Mozilla Mail, Eudora, and other esoteric things with no problem. So today I installed a new mail server on a client site dedicated to their domain. The MTA is exim, running with almost the same configuration we use on our main servers. The dovecot.conf is 100% identical. No mail was moved by hand to the new mail server - to migrate we copied the mail setting up the old and new accounts in Thunderbird and dragging things over (just to rule out that possibility, we have also tested using brand new empty accounts to reproduce the issue). Everything is golden using Thunderbird - email is send, and shows up in the inbox immediately. Enter Outlook 2003 (SP1): It shows all folders and mail fine. It sends mail fine. Nothing shows up in the inbox. At this moment, Thunderbird also stops receiving new mail in the inbox. I check the server, and there's a mail sitting in the /new directory in the maildir. Not only that, but suddenly NONE of the accounts on the box show any new mail, exhibiting the same signs. I tried a variety of things, including 'sync', removing all the dovecot* index files in the maildir, and restarting dovecot (being sure to killall imap before bringing it back up). Sometimes, these steps would magically cause everything to work again, until I did a mail poll in Outlook which causes the problem to re-occur. Other times, these steps didn't seem to do anything. A couple times, for no apparent reason, without doing anything, mail would show up. Too hopeful, we sat around for 30 minutes sending more mail to an account and then just idling...nothing showed up. The hardware is good, we've compiled a full glibc and gcc just to ensure that there are no CPU/memory issues, and this box has a solid good history behind it in it's prior uses. Until Outlook is used, everything works fine. We do have the outlook-idle workaround enabled, and tried both with and without delay-newmail, which didn't make any difference. Cheers, -- Casey Allen Shobe | cshobe(a)seattleserver.com | 206-381-2800 SeattleServer.com, Inc. | http://www.seattleserver.com

3 3

[Dovecot] mbx to mbox conversion
by Marc Perkel 01 Jun '06

01 Jun '06

Here's a feature I'd like. If Dovecot opened an MBX format file that it would convert it to an MBOX format file. I have several files that I'm having a hard time converting. The one I got from Washington University WUIMAP is extremely flawed.

3 2

[Dovecot] Cannot remove Maildir folder
by Marcin Deranek 01 Jun '06

01 Jun '06

Hi, I have been using dovecot 1.0 beta 8 on Debian Sarge for a couple of days and I experienced some problems when removing folders.. As an IMAP client I use Thunderbird 1.5 and IMAP folders are on NFS. Here are the steps to re-produce the problem: 1. Run Thunderbird as usual 2. Create folder 3. Remove folder - In my case folder is not removed but moved to Trash (Thunderbird setting) 4. I go to Trash and remove it from there 5. Folder is removed but I get additional ..DOVECOT-TRASHED directory - next time it won't be possible to remove it Some more info: * Just before removal I run lsof to see which files are in use: bash# lsof /home/marcin ... imap 21360 marcin cwd DIR 0,15 344064 3307008 /home/marcin (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) imap 21360 marcin 8u DIR 0,15 4096 4223651 /home/marcin/Maildir/.Trash.test/new (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) imap 21360 marcin 9u DIR 0,15 4096 4223650 /home/marcin/Maildir/.Trash.test/cur (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) imap 21360 marcin 11r REG 0,15 144 4223663 /home/marcin/Maildir/.Trash.test/dovecot.index (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) imap 21360 marcin 12r REG 0,15 104 4223647 /home/marcin/Maildir/.Trash.test/dovecot.index.log (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) imap 21360 marcin 13u REG 0,15 10272 4223657 /home/marcin/Maildir/.Trash.test/dovecot.index.cache (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) ... There are more files in use but in this case I'm interested with PID 21360 which has opened Trash/test (the one which I'm going to remove) * Just after removal I see error message in Syslog: dovecot: IMAP(marcin): unlink_directory(/home/marcin/Maildir/..DOVECOT-TRASHED) failed: Device or resource busy Running lsof again gives the following: imap 21360 marcin cwd DIR 0,15 344064 3307008 /home/marcin (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) imap 21360 marcin 11r REG 0,15 144 4223663 /home/marcin/Maildir/..DOVECOT-TRASHED/.nfs004072af0002cb1b (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) imap 21360 marcin 12r REG 0,15 104 4223647 /home/marcin/Maildir/..DOVECOT-TRASHED/.nfs0040729f0002cb1a (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) imap 21360 marcin 13u REG 0,15 10272 4223657 /home/marcin/Maildir/..DOVECOT-TRASHED/.nfs004072a90002cb1c (filer:/vol/vol0/home/marcin) Looking into some NFS docs we can read: "A client has a file opened. Another process on that client deletes the file. So the client NFS stack rather than deleting the file and potentially hurting the other process, it renames the file to .nfs<file_handle>." To me it looks like one imap process tries to delete .Trash.test directory (first rename and then unlink) whereas other imap process has still opened dovecot.* files. Any workaround/fix for that ? Regards, Marcin Deranek

2 5

[Dovecot] beta8 starts but no POP3 access
by Obantec Support 31 May '06

31 May '06

Hi Timo i see you just answered a posting less than 1 hour old! any chance you can comment on mine (29/05/06) repeated below and very urgent i get dovecot beta8 up. I just compiled stock beta8 on FC3 with ./configure make make install all looked ok and i changed my dovecot.conf to suit. start dovecot and i see it running May 29 08:18:00 Info: Dovecot v1.0.beta8 starting up POP3 to 1 account and May 29 08:18:06 Info: auth(default): client in: AUTH 1 PLAIN service=POP3 lip=xx.xx.xx.xx rip=yy.yy.yy.yy resp=<hidden> May 29 08:18:06 Info: auth(default): client out: OK 1 user=obantec_com May 29 08:18:06 Info: auth(default): master in: REQUEST 1 19528 1 May 29 08:18:06 Info: auth(default): master out: USER 1 obantec_com system_user=obantec_com uid=501 gid=10001 home=/home/domain/domain17 May 29 08:18:06 Info: pop3-login: Login: user=<obantec_com>, method=PLAIN, rip=yy.yy.yy.yy, lip=xx.xx.xx.xx May 29 08:18:06 proteus2 dovecot: POP3(obantec_com): Corrupted index cache file /home/domain/domain17/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache: indexid changed May 29 08:18:06 proteus2 dovecot: child 19536 (pop3) killed with signal 11 yy.yy.yy.yy & xx.xx.xx.xx are the ip's just masked out. OE just immediately say error , what is also worrying is the Corrupted index message even though i am using POP3. any ideas what to look for. I might add a test box running FC3 and the same .conf works! Mark -- Obantec Support www.obantec.net 0845 458 3121 WebHosting and Domains Nominet UK Member & IPStag Holder CentralNic Accredited Reseller

2 2