- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] Best Imap Transfer Tool?
by Neil 08 Feb '09

08 Feb '09

So I'm looking to do a migration of my IMAP mailboxes, and I'm looking for the best tool to use. I used to use the uw-mailutil tool, a while ago, but that was a bit coarse of a tool. More recently I've used imapsync, but that was giving me some errors. I've sort of tracked those down; but I was wondering if anyone else had any other recommendations...? Thanks.

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[Dovecot] Migrating mail between servers
by Knute Johnson 07 Feb '09

07 Feb '09

I've currently got dovecot running on a Fedora server and I want to move all my mail to my new server running ubuntu. Both use mbox and I have IMAP working in both. Can I just copy the ~user/mail directory and /var/mail/user file and replace them in the new server? Thanks, -- Knute Johnson "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H.L. Mencken

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[Dovecot] FreeBSD pam auth problems
by Dmitry Samersoff 07 Feb '09

07 Feb '09

I'm impressed by dovecto and try to upgrade my home system from wu-imapd running there for last 5 years to dovecot. It's straghtforward FreeBSD setup with ssl-only auth, inboxes in /var/mail and user mail under %h/Mail But I get some strange error: Fatal: userdb didn't return a home directory, but mail location used it (%h): %h/Mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u Thank you in advance! -Dmitry mircat:dovecot#./sbin/dovecot -n # 1.1.10: /usr/local/dovecot/etc/dovecot.conf # OS: FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE i386 base_dir: /var/run/dovecot log_path: /var/log/dovecot_main.log info_log_path: /var/log/dovecot_info.log listen: *:143 ssl_listen: *:993 disable_plaintext_auth: no login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_user: nobody login_chroot: no login_max_processes_count: 30 max_mail_processes: 30 first_valid_uid: 1 mail_uid: smmsp mail_gid: smmsp mail_location: mbox:%h/Mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u mail_debug: yes mbox_lazy_writes: no auth default: failure_delay: 1 verbose: yes debug: yes worker_max_request_count: 1 passdb: driver: pam args: imap -- Dmitry Samersoff dms(a)samersoff.net, http://devnull.samersoff.net * There will come soft rains ...

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[Dovecot] Info regarding conversion of mbox to maildir
by Scott Silva 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

When I finally decide to convert to maildir, will I have to set up namespaces during the conversion, or will dovecot figure out where everything is by itself? Should I set up deliver to go to maildir/ globally, or per user? I have considered using the convert plugin, if there are not a lot of negatives. -- MailScanner is like deodorant... You hope everybody uses it, and you notice quickly if they don't!!!!

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[Dovecot] Public namespace permissions documentation/questions
by Thomas Hummel 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Hello Timo, In my trials to setup a shared namespace with dovecot-1.1.8/LDAP passdb/userdb (prefetch)/Maildir, I found out that : 1) ACL are mandatory (at least if the acl plugin is triggered in dovecot.conf) Am I correct ? I'm still not sure if we can do without ACL at all (only with unix permissions and system_user userdb extra field). 2) the system_user userdb extra field is supposed to be ...the logname of the user the secondary groups of whom we want to check ! i.e. if user foobar belongs to secondary groups foogid, zgid, wgid and doveshared uid=xxx(foobar) gid=yyy(foogid) groups=zzz(zgid),www(wgid),vvv(doveshared) and we dovecot to take them into account, we have to make the usedb return the system_user extra field with the value foobar. Seems obvious now and said this way, but looking at the wiki : "system_user: If this is given, the user's groups are read from /etc/group (or wherever NSS is configured to taken them from)." I thought 'system_user' was a flag (a boolean) which, when triggered made dovecot look for the secondaries group of the user (user whose name is already known). a) am I correct ? b) why isn't system_user such a boolean ? Is there a case where we'd want system_user to be different than the user dovecot runs as at the moment the check takes place ? 3) same idea with acl_groups : since this extra_field holds a list of groups for the ACL plugin, why not rely on the native unix groups of the system the user belong to ? Thanks (and sorry for the 2 previous threads where I was blindly confused by the system_user thing). -- Thomas Hummel | Institut Pasteur <hummel(a)pasteur.fr> | Pôle informatique - systèmes et réseau

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[Dovecot] dovecot-shared file
by Thomas Hummel 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Hello Timo, About the dovecot-shared file, the wiki says : "Unless you're using a single UID for all the users, you'll need to have a dovecot-shared file in each shared maildir. The group and the file permissions for new files inside the maildir are taken from the dovecot-shared file." but says the following too : "With Maildir dovecot-shared file controls if the \Seen flags are shared or private. If you don't have the file, they're shared." The question is "does it make sense (or is it even possible) not to have the file ?". Why would one not have the file and how would it work then ? By relying on the set-gid bit and umask ? Finally, the wiki says : "If you do have the file, the \Seen flag state is stored only in the user's index files. By making each user have their own private index files, you can make the \Seen flag private for the users." So, my undersanding is that : 1) you have the file 1.a) if INDEX points to the same place, flags are shared but are lost if indexes are lost 1.b) if INDEX points to some user dependant place, flags are private but are lost if indexes are lost 2) you don't have the file flags are shared, whatever INDEX points to and, since they're stored in filename, survive indexes lost. but does shared-mailboxes even work if we don't have that file ? maybe only if the set-gid bit and umask does what the file would have done ? So maybe, if you want to share flags, 2) is safer dans if you want them private, 1.b) is the only choice ? thanks -- Thomas Hummel | Institut Pasteur <hummel(a)pasteur.fr> | Pôle informatique - systèmes et réseau

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[Dovecot] Shared subscription, acl-list and uidvalidity(s)
by Thomas Hummel 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Hello, I'm running dovecot-1.1.8/Maildir/ACL plugin. I sucessfully set up a Maildir shared between users of the unix group 'doveshared' via a public namespace, unix permissions and ACL files. The location of my public namespace is /path/to/public. I tried 2 sub-setups : First setup ---------- drwxrws--- 4 root doveshared 4096 Jan 30 13:39 public -rw-r----- 1 root doveshared 18 Jan 30 13:38 public/subscriptions I first connect (in Thunderbird) to dovecot with user 'hummel', then with user 'doveimap'. The following files are created in /path/to/public/ : -rw------- 1 doveimap doveshared 40 Jan 30 14:03 dovecot-acl-list -rw------- 1 hummel doveshared 8 Jan 30 14:03 dovecot-uidvalidity -rw------- 1 hummel doveshared 0 Jan 30 14:02 dovecot-uidvalidity.4982fa7a I've got my own idea about what they're used for, but can you explain what they are supposed to be ? I guess the uidvalidity files are UIDVALIDITY, not for the mailboxes the namespace holds (since my understanding is that the uidvalidities of mailboxes are stored in the first line of dovecot-uidlist files), but for the namespace itself (in case it is destroyed and then recreated for instance). Am I right ? Why 2 files ? Second setup ------------- I follow the 'Shared subscriptions' section of the wiki : drw-r-s--- 4 root doveshared 4096 Jan 30 14:19 public -rw-r----- 1 root doveshared 18 Jan 30 13:38 public/subscriptions As expected, dovecot (and it shows in the logs), has not sufficient permissions to create the files above (dovecot-acl-list, dovecot-uidvalidity, dovecot-uidvalidity.4982fa7a). What are the consequences ? Thanks. -- Thomas Hummel | Institut Pasteur <hummel(a)pasteur.fr> | Pôle informatique - systèmes et réseau

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[Dovecot] help: "dovecot: pipe() failed: Too many open files"
by Jake Grimmett 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Dear All, I'm having an intermittent problem, with dovecot slowing to a crawl. Restarting dovecot fixes the problem. Looking at the maillog, I see loads of these errors.... dovecot: pipe() failed: Too many open files dovecot: Temporary failure in creating login processes, slowing down for now dovecot: Created login processes successfully, unstalling looking at the processes, I can see ~200 imap-login's and about ~700 imap's there are 1000 email accounts on the server - half of which are in regular use. The server is Dell PE1950 running dovecot (1.0.7-2.el5) as supplied with Centos 5.2 (~Redhat AS 5.2) in 64 bit mode. I've upgraded the server from 4 to 8GB of RAM, and from a dual core 1.5Ghz xeon, to a quad core 1.5GHz xeon, and this does not seem to help. The following settings were increased by me to try and stop this problem - but did not have an obvious effect: login_process_size = 128 login_process_per_connection = yes login_max_processes_count = 512 Other parameters were left commented out: #max_mail_processes = 1024 #auth_process_size = 256 If anyone has any ideas about where I might be going wrong, please let me know..! many thanks Jake -- Dr Jake Grimmett Head Of Scientific Computing MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 0QH, UK. Phone 01223 402219 Mobile 0776 9886539

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Re: [Dovecot] ¿DC won't start? "leaked file fd 5:"
by mathemat＠gmx.net 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Hi Timo, >> mail.info dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.15 starting up >> mail.err dovecot: auth(default): Panic: Leaked file fd 5: dev 0.10 >> inode 3 > This happens only when Dovecot has been configured with --enable-devel- > checks (or was it --with-debug in v1.0? I'm not sure anymore). The > easiest way to avoid the problem is to not do that. Well, I read that on the net. But the goal was to get it going *without* recompiling... please! :) > The problem is probably related to running in a special environment > which uses some extra fds for some things (possibly a bug or maybe a > feature, who knows) Maybe. But as i got it from an official repo <http://www.dovecot.org/releases/1.0/dovecot-1.0.15.tar.gz>, the thing obviously works for some folks... i'm afraid, they just configured DC somewhat sensefullier (while not documenting this anywhere). Ideas from the profs (you)? -- Psssst! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger01

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[Dovecot] NFS - inotify vs kqueue
by Jack Stewart 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Hi, I've seen some chatter on NFS boards about kqueue being more reliable than inotify when used in NFSv3 and NFSv2. The chatter is a bit old so I don't know if it is true anymore. Anyone have pro/con experience with dovecot on the inotify/kqueue question when using NFS storage? I realize that kqueue is probably a bit slower and causes some delay with IDLE. Also, it may not really make any difference which is why I ask the question. ---Jack

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