- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] Thunderbird and Dovecot on FC5 taking a long time to retrieve message
by Bruen, Mark 02 Aug '08

02 Aug '08

I'm running FC5 (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp) and Dovecot dovecot-1.0-0.beta8.2.fc5 with Thunderbird 2.0.0.16. I set up imap (dovecot) so I can access my mail locally or remotely. It seems to take a very long time (minutes sometimes) for an Email to be retrieved after I select it in the folder list and/or in the Email list locally or remotely. I've traced the imap process and found it doing a lot of reading (read() system calls) for a long time. I do have a high message count in some of these folders (i.e.: 20000 or so). Is there any way to improve performance (use more memory, cache indexes, tune I/O parameters, etc...) ? Thanks. -Mark

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[Dovecot] POP3 locking
by Adrian Overbury 02 Aug '08

02 Aug '08

I'm trying to understand what dovecot's behavior will be in a given scenario to see if it will work as a (hopefully better) replacement for the home-grown pop3 server we currently use. User A is on a slow dialup connection, and uses, oh, let's say Outlook, since that's where most of our problems seem to spring from. User A uses outlook to download his mail over pop3. Half way through downloading a particularly large message, Outlook decides that the whole process isn't happening fast enough, so it opens another connection to the server and tries to download (potentially) the same message again. Now, our current server establishes a lock on the mailbox, and when that second connection happens it simply responds that there's no messages to collect... we used to have it terminate the connection, but this brings up confusing error messages on User A's client, and they call up and complain -- not an ideal situation. I've got a dovecot installation on my testing server, and I think I've set everything up correctly; it authenticates from my LDAP database, finds the home directory, lists the mail, all that... I believe somewhere it there it uses fcntl to establish an advisory lock on the mailbox (oh, we're using Maildir, by the way). I'm not sure where, though, or how long the lock persists for, or what its actual purpose is, because my tests show me that I can log the same users in with two concurrent sessions and get the same message twice. It's probably a fault in my understanding of how locking in user sessions of a pop3 server should work, but that doesn't sound right to me. Can someone explain if what I'm seeing is correct, or what problem it may be symptomatic of? Does dovecot even do concurrent-user-session locking? So far I've enjoyed playing with dovecot -- far more than the current server we use. I'd like to use it as our primary pop3 server, but preventing users from having concurrent sessions and getting the same message more than once, and keeping them from seeing errors because of their client trying to open multiple sessions is important. Oh, and I'm user dovecot 1.0.beta3, since I don't really have the option of upgrading the OS on my mail servers any time soon. Adrian

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[Dovecot] Quota warnings wrong behaviour (1.1.2)
by Włodek Waligórski 02 Aug '08

02 Aug '08

Hi, I use the latest version of dovecot 1.1.2. Thanks to the excellent docs I managed to get everything working so far, but ... I'm experiencing such strange behaviour when user gets over 90% of quota (the threshold is such): 1. user uses say 89% of his ~/Maildir 2. message arrives that increases quota usage to 92% 3. quota_warning is _NOT_ triggered 4. user deletes the surplus message and gets back to 89% (quota_rule2: Trash:ignore) 5. quota_warning is triggered and quota warning message arrives So the event gets triggered when user passes the quota threshold, but from a "wrong direction". I would expect that message should arrive together with the surplus message. Below I paste my dovecot.conf and "./configure" opts: -------------------cut--------------------------------------- # dovecot -n # 1.1.2: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf base_dir: /usr/local/var/run/dovecot/ log_path: /dev/stderr info_log_path: /dev/stderr log_timestamp: listen: 127.0.0.1:143 ssl_listen: 0:993 ssl_cert_file: /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem ssl_key_file: /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem ssl_cipher_list: ALL:!LOW verbose_ssl: yes login_dir: /usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login verbose_proctitle: yes first_valid_uid: 89 last_valid_uid: 89 mail_uid: vpopmail mail_gid: vchkpw mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir mail_debug: yes mail_plugins: quota imap_quota imap_client_workarounds: outlook-idle auth default: user: vpopmail verbose: yes debug: yes passdb: driver: vpopmail args: quota_template=quota_rule=*:backend=%q userdb: driver: vpopmail plugin: quota: maildir quota_rule: ?:storage=110485760 quota_rule2: Trash:ignore quota_warning: storage=90%% /usr/local/bin/imap-quota-warning 90 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # grep "./configure" config.log | head -1 $ ./configure --disable-ipv6 --without-passwd --without-passwd-file --without-shadow --without-pam --without-checkpassword --without-bsdauth --without-gssapi --without-sia --without-ldap --with-vpopmail --without-static-userdb --without-prefetch-userdb --without-sql --without-pgsql --without-mysql --without-sqlite --with-ssl=openssl ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My system is x86 Debian-testing, SMP. -Włodek

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[Dovecot] Permission denied creating inbox file in /var/mail
by Steve Ochani 01 Aug '08

01 Aug '08

Hello all, I'm using dovecot version 1.07 on CentoOS 5 (clone of RHEL 5). When there is no existing mbox file for a user in /var/mail I get the following error: --------------- Jul 31 16:32:32 newnewton dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<testm2>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:127.0.0.1, lip=::ffff:127.0.0.1, secured Jul 31 16:32:32 newnewton dovecot: IMAP(testm2): open(/var/mail/testm2, O_CREAT) failed: Permission denied Jul 31 16:32:32 newnewton dovecot: IMAP(testm2): access() failed with mbox file /var/mail/testm2: No such file or directory Jul 31 16:32:32 newnewton dovecot: IMAP(testm2): stat() failed with mbox file /var/mail/testm2: No such file or directory Jul 31 16:32:32 newnewton dovecot: IMAP(testm2): Connection closed ---------------- My persimmons on /var/mail (which is a symlink to /var/spool/mail) : drwxrwxr-x 2 root mail 4096 Jul 31 16:32 mail I have tried adding the mail group as mail_privileged_group, the output of dovecot -n : -------------------- # 1.0.7: /etc/dovecot.conf login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable(default): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_executable(imap): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_executable(pop3): /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login mail_privileged_group: mail mail_location: mbox:~/IMAPmail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u mail_executable(default): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap mail_executable(imap): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap mail_executable(pop3): /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3 mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3 auth default: passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd -------------------- Here is the permission on /etc/dovecot.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 42833 Jul 31 15:30 /etc/dovecot.conf I've searched google and the mailing list archive and tried the couple of things commonly suggested. As for a test I changed perms on /var/spool/mail to 777 and then dovecot made the inbox file. The file ended up being owned by the user and the group owner was the group that the user belongs to, not mail. When I create new users using useradd there is a 0 byte file created in /var/mail for the user but I use scripts to create student accounts every semester (about 10,000) so I'm trying to avoid having to add more things that the script will have to create. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks -Steve O.

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[Dovecot] dovecot.sieve file location?
by kbajwa 01 Aug '08

01 Aug '08

CentOS 5.2 Postfix-2.3.3 Dovecot-1.1.1 Dovecot.Sieve-1.1.5 I have setup with: home_mailbox = Maildir/ (/etc/postfix/main.cf) & mail-location = maildir:~/Maildir (/etc/dovecot.conf) I have created a 'test' user to test Sieve 'Vacation' setup. My questions are: 1. Which folder '.dovecot.sieve' script is copied into? Is it 'home/test' -or- 'home/test/Maildir' or someplace else? 2. '.dovecot.sieve' script parameter ":days 1" means that the reply is sent once a day. Is it possible to send the reply 'immediately'? Kirti

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[Dovecot] Dovecot load balancing
by Thomas Hummel 01 Aug '08

01 Aug '08

Hello, I'd like to figure out how to set up a site running dovecot on multiple computers for load balancing reasons. I'm currently running dovecot-1.0.14 on a 8GB RAM, 2 quad-core 2.66Ghz Xeon single server which runs FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE SMP. . the mailbox format was mbox and I successfully migrated to Maildir only . mailboxes are on an NFS NetApp server, attribute caching is off . indexes are locally stored . the number of users is around 2500, some of them having huge mailboxes (~ 1 or 2 GB) . a large amount of users is using IMAP but there are also many POP3 users . the passdb/userdb is openLDAP . for now, I neither use namespaces, nor quotas nor deliver, nor any plugin, but I plan to use namespaces and ACL to implement shared mailboxes. The same machine is running postfix-2.4.6 with amavisd-new-2.5.4 (no spamassassin) and clamav-0.93.1. I'm using procmail-3.22 as the LDA. I installed dovecot-1.1.2 on non-standard ports for test and plan to switch to it as I read on this list it performs better, load wise. This setup (1.0.14) works great except that, compared to the time mailboxes were in mbox format, the load average (as shown by 'top') goes higher from a significant amout on a regular basis and sometimes goes over the top. On "normal" circumstances, the number of processes is around 1400 and the load oscillates between 1 to 10 and 30 to 60. Most of the time, I'd say the load average is around 20. Every friday a message (no attachement, decent size) is sent to all users : in such circumstances (but only sometimes, not every time : let's say half the time such a message is sent), the load goes so high that I have to stop dovecot to let procmail deliver the message or even reboot the machine. Sometimes, the load climbs up to something like 150, then goes back to the 'normal' case described above. I know multi-master replication is on the roadmap. I know some dovecot sites use in the meantime several dovecot servers. I'd like to know how those sites do the load balancing, the main problem beeing to be able to direct each user to the same dovecot server each time as stated in the Wiki (http://wiki.dovecot.org/NFS) I don't think that DNS round robin would do the trick because some UA (for instance Thunderbird) often open up to 5 connexions for the same user, unless maybe such UA makes a single 'gethostbyname()', thus connecting 5 times to the same physical server ? What are the options to achieve such a setup ? Any successful experiences ? Thank you -- Thomas Hummel | Institut Pasteur <hummel(a)pasteur.fr> | Pôle informatique - systèmes et réseau

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[Dovecot] One LDAP attribute for many variables
by Juan Asensio Sánchez 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

Hi Using Dovecot 1.1.2 with LDAP. If i have this: user_attrs = uid=home=/var/vmail/%$,mailuserquota=quota_rule=*:storage=%$,=mail=maildir:/var/vmail/%n/Maildir OK. But if i have this: user_attrs = uid=home=/var/vmail/%$,mailuserquota=quota_rule=*:storage=%$,uid=mail=maildir:/var/vmail/%$/Maildir I get this error: deliver(usuario1): Jul 25 12:59:08 Error: Per-user script path is unknown. See http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA/Sieve#location The only difference is that I use the uid LDAP attribute twice. Why does this happen?

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[Dovecot] Seen flag in maildir filename not being respected
by Eduardo M KALINOWSKI 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

Hi, I'm using dovecot 1.1.2 (but I've noticed this since 1.1.1 which I was using until yesterday). It seems dovecot is ignoring the "S" flag in Maildir filenames, and is relying only in its Index Files to determine if a message has been read or not. I say that because if I delete the dovecot.index.* files for a mail folder, all the mails in there appear as unread. Also, I've tried accessing the maildir directly (using heirloom-mailx, but mutt should have done, too) and reading a new message. The file name was changed to add a "S" to the end, but this message was still marked as "unread" when the mail folder was accessed via IMAP. The flags R, F and T are correctly read from the filename if no index is present. I haven't tested the other flags. I'm using dovecot's deliver, and it creates filenames such as "1217450416.M77457P5201.mail.kalinowski.com.br,S=1377,W=1411:2,S", that is, perfectly fine. dovecot -n: # 1.1.2: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf log_path: /var/log/dovecot/main.log info_log_path: /var/log/dovecot/info.log log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S ssl_cert_file: /etc/ssl/certs/server.pem ssl_key_file: /etc/ssl/private/server.pem login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login login_processes_count: 1 first_valid_uid: 100 mail_privileged_group: mail mail_location: maildir:/home/vmail/%d/%n/INBOX:INDEX=/home/vmail/%d/%n/dovecotidx mail_plugins: quota imap_quota zlib auth default: mechanisms: plain login cram-md5 passdb: driver: passwd-file args: username_format=%n /home/vmail/%d/db/passwd passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: static args: uid=104 gid=8 home=/home/vmail/%d/%n userdb: driver: passwd socket: type: listen client: path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-client mode: 438 master: path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-master mode: 384 user: vmail group: mail plugin: quota: maildir quota_rule: ?:storage=0 quota_rule2: Trash:ignore quota_rule3: Spam:ignore quota_rule4: Spam.Errado:ignore sieve: /home/vmail/%d/db/sieves/%n.sieve

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[Dovecot] wrong permission
by Cor Bosman 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

Im still finding a number of control directories that have the wrong permission: Jun 26 00:02:34 userimap13.xs4all.nl dovecot: IMAP(xxx): file_dotlock_create(/var/spool/mail/dovecot-control/g/gl/xxx/INBOX/.Apple Mail To Do/dovecot-uidlist) failed: Permission denied userimap1# ls -al "/var/spool/mail/dovecot-control/g/gl/xxx/INBOX/.Apple Mail To Do" total 8 drw------- 2 xxx user 4096 May 12 23:43 . drwx------ 7 xxx user 4096 May 12 23:43 .. This folder was created May 12, well after us starting to use 1.1RC versions. I currently fixed a few hundred of these (out of millions of folders), and whats interesting is that a very large percentage of those (1/3th) is the folder "Apple Mail To Do", created by Mail.App I think. Obviously that same folder is no where near 1/3th of our total folder number, so thats a bit strange. I really doubt this is some local setting issue, because then id see much more of those. Right now it's a tiny fraction of our total folder amount, which leads me to believe it's some weird edge case in the dovecot code. Anyone have any ideas? Cor

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[Dovecot] dovecot-imap displays empty domainalias mailboxen
by Kacper Wysocki 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

Hi folks, I'm using dovecot 1.0.13 as the IMAPS frontend for a vpopmail/qmail virtual domain setup. Dovecot is set up as follows: passdb vpopmail{ } userdb vpopmail{ } I've added a domain alias for the main domain with vaddaliasdomain and email to post@aliasdomain is delivered to post@maindomain and can be checked with pop. However, when I try to check IMAP through the account post@aliasdomain I am confronted with an empty mailbox. If I log in using post@maindomain I get the expected contents. Why can't my users log in using user@aliasdomain to check their emails? Regards, Kacper Wysocki -- http://kacper.doesntexist.org http://windows.dontexist.net There is symmetry in chaos, and chaos in excessive order. Though you may see heaven or hell, remember that it is your mind which creates them. Avoid grasping the one or fleeing the other.

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