- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] add inotify support to dovecot
by Johannes Berg 13 Jul '05

13 Jul '05

Hi, attached patch against test76 adds inotify support and the --with-notify=... configure option that defaults to the current check for dnotify using no special method if dnotify cannot be compiled, and can be set to none, dnotify and inotify. If it is set to dnotify or inotify, failure to compile a test program results in an error. Also, it adds | file change notification method ..... : <method> to the output at the end of configure. The only thing I don't like about this patch is the fact that I had to add a field notify_context to struct io, but I didn't see a different way to handle this. Also, the patch doesn't support the condition parameter, it simply always asks for all the relevant changes. I don't really see that it is useful for in the context of file system notifications anyway. I modeled this after ioloop-notify-dn.c with my other patch applied to it, if you don't like the other patch you'll want to "revert" that change in the new ioloop-notify-inotify.c file as well. Oh, and obviously I didn't include patches to configure and all the Makefiles, so of course you'll have to run automake. But you already knew that :) I only tested this with maildir. I did add IN_MODIFY so I think it should work with mbox too, but someone should probably verify. Have fun, johannes

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[Dovecot] sorting question
by Johannes Berg 13 Jul '05

13 Jul '05

Hi, If I understand the thread sorting algorithm correctly (from draft-ietf-imapext-sort-17.txt and the code), it will sort like this (where I use numbers instead of dates with higher numbers being newer mails) 4 10 3 11 2 12 1 13 etc into all the lower levels. Thunderbird will actually sort this like this: 1 13 2 12 3 11 4 10 where threads are sorted by the newest child in them. Now, I am thinking that evolution simply uses dovecot's THREAD feature and doesn't implement anything itself, so that if I wanted to have that kind of threading, I'd have to implement it in dovecot. Would this be easy? I'm thinking that I should just treat all nodes as if they were dummy nodes in sort_root_nodes, but that only fixes the first level afaict, because later dates are not propagated up. Essentially, I think what the algorithm tb uses does is not use a nodes date as it's sorting criterion, but it's newest child, and apply this rule recursively. Does anyone else think this feature would be useful? I regularly end up almost missing mail because it is sorted at such a low position and I don't see the thread at all.. johannes

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[Dovecot] Dovecot runs as ...
by Matt Juszczak 13 Jul '05

13 Jul '05

Hi all, We're using LDAP 100% for everything ... So does that mean that for the following user, I can put another user, like nobody? user = root I guess that user still has to be able to access /var/mail and such, correct?

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[Dovecot] 1.0-test77
by Timo Sirainen 13 Jul '05

13 Jul '05

http://dovecot.org/ It's hot in here. Something like 25-30c for many days now. My brains don't work in that heat. So, this is still not an 1.0-alpha1. I'll put it out when I think the release will actually be fully working :) Changes since test76: - Fixes to FETCHing MIME body parts, especially with message/rfc822 attachments. We hadn't been handling this entirely correctly ever (this part of IMAP spec was pretty difficult for me to understand earlier..). This also caused Dovecot to sometimes disconnect clients fetching [n.MIME] body parts earlier, if someone had that problem. - Maildir: Several bugs fixed with APPEND/COPYing mails - mbox: Keywords weren't stored to index with APPEND - inotify patch by Johannes Berg (and possibly broken by me). Can be enabled with --with-notify=inotify parameter to configure. - SEARCH now doesn't fail if a messageset outside valid range is given to it. Some mobile IMAP client was broken because this didn't work. - Cache mail headers when saving mails to mbox. We should cache everything, but this is a start.. - And other cache file fixes/optimizations

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[Dovecot] PERMANENTFLAGS bug?
by Nils Henrik Tvetene 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hi, Im new to the list, so might be a FAQ allthough I havent found it anywhere: When I try to connect to dovecot/imap from snappermail (palm), I get a IMAP protocol error. The complaint is about: OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft ) \*)] Flags permitted. As you can see, theres an extra " )" after "Draft". Any clues on how to fix/bypass this? Regards, Nils Henrik Tvetene

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[Dovecot] Dovecot 1.0-stable mbox performance and disconnections
by Chris Wakelin 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

I've got some of our busiest users now using Dovecot instead of UW-IMAP with mbox-format mailboxes and predominantly Outlook Express as the client. Doing some perfomance monitoring (with Solaris 8 process accounting), it looks like Dovecot needing to read only 30-50% of the disk blocks needed by UW-IMAP, but I was hoping for better! What seems to happen, is that most of the connections use only a small number of blocks (due to Dovecot indexes, presumably) but occassionally a process will read lots of blocks, sometimes even more than a UW-IMAP session. Is this expected, or is something going wrong with the index updates? I have the default sync settings, I think (mbox_dirty_syncs = yes, mbox_very_dirty_syncs = no, mbox_lazy_writes = yes) My INBOX is an extreme example with ~10,000 messages and most processes reading a few hundred blocks but a couple using 20,000 or so! Also, Dovecot seems to be dropping connections, sometimes, for no good reason (putting some extra i_info lines suggests for "inactivity"). Thunderbird tends to reconnect automatically, though. It seems it may be happening at the end of an IDLE command, something like:- 4 IDLE + idling * 1005 EXISTS DONE * 1005 EXPUNGE but then the expected 4 OK Idle completed never comes. Has anybody else seen this? Best Wishes, Chris -- --+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+- Christopher Wakelin, c.d.wakelin(a)reading.ac.uk IT Services Centre, The University of Reading, Tel: +44 (0)118 378 8439 Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK Fax: +44 (0)118 975 3094

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[Dovecot] newbie questions
by Stewart Dean 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Thanks in advance for your patience and assistance. Since a system administrator's work is most successful when nobody knows you've done anything....(ugly that...you get neither raises nor equipment funding as a result), I prefer to learn from other's experiences rather than fail in the same pits. We are considering a switch from UW to Dovecot, since our users persist in using the INBOX as a file cabinet (maybe 25% use homedir folders) and we currently have, I think, .mbox INBOXes which are thus getting massively unmanageable and fragile. Machine config: Running IBM AIX 5.2/5.3 on an F80 with 4GB memory (may be upgraded to 16GB), with IBM's sendmail binary at V8.11.6p2, hand compiled procmail at 3.22, 64-bit binary from C for AIX V6.0 Some questions I couldn't find answered in the docs: 1) Crispin of UW has a formats.txt file in which he lists and evaluates the various formats. He calls the INBOX format type we use .unix (one big honking flat file). Q1: Is this what is described in the Dovecot docs mail-storages.txt file as .mbox? 2) Authentication: The DC docs don't mention using NIS/yp for authentication, that I can find. Q2: Does DC support NIS/yp authentication? I guess I could periodically do a ypcat passwd to a file and point DC at it... 3) on IBM's AIX Unix... Q3: Is there anyone out there running DC on AIX? 5.x or 4.3.3? JFS or JFS2? 4) Inbox location/format: = I will want to move from our legacy .mbox format to, I suppose, the DC default of Maildir++. = I will want to do this in groups over time, rather than all at once, so both formats will have to work = The legacy location of INBOXes has been /var/spool/mail/<userid>. The docs appear to say that Maildir format INBOXes should be in ~/Maildir. Q4:Can the INBOXes be in two location, the converted new Maildirs in ~, and the old unconverted in vsm? Or will I have to override the DC cfg'ed INBOX location to be VSM until I get them all converted and then move them all to ~/Maildir and change the DC config to that? 5) Some mention was made of procmail configuration issues Q5: Can procmail support both formats/locations, or will I have to put changes in the migrated users' procmailrc (what fun!)? Again, thanks! -- ==== Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504 sdean(a)bard.edu voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035

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[Dovecot] mysql
by Jim Edwards 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hello, Does dovecot require mysql in order to work? Fedora rpms are claiming mysql dependencies. I'm sure you're aware of the long-lived arguement of postgresql v. mysql. If it wasn't your intention to force this, then please snarl at Red Hat. If it was your intention, then grrrrr! Thanks for this product. I like it for it's speed and stability. Jim Edwards

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[Dovecot] bug: very strange behavior with pop3
by Yannick Majoros 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hello, We have some strange problem which could be related to authentication here. All our user info is in an openldap directory. We normally use pam/getpwent in dovecot to access our user accounts, via nss_ldap/pam_ldap, but we tried to connect directly to the ldap server, with the very same results. We have one user (out of 100) which just cannot use dovecot with pop3. His login/password are accepted, and then dovecot doesn't say anything. I am sure it isn't a client issue: same result with Eudora, Thunderbird and while directly connecting through openssl to POP3s port and "talking POP3". Here is some session transcript: +OK dovecot ready. USER rinstalle +OK PASS M=/)p365 +OK Logged in. And it then stops responding (without giving a reason, breaking the connection). Nothing in the logs, it sees this as a regular login and that's all... Now, it seems that when I copy this user in ldap, the new one occasionaly works. I first thought it did depend on the user name (uid or dn), but it doesn't seem to be the case. I think it is just random. Here is an ldif of this user: dn: uid=rinstalle,ou=divers,ou=login,ou=Autres,ou=Personnes,dc=inma,dc=ucl,dc= ac,dc=be uid: rinstalle cn: compte foireux homeDirectory: /home/xx sn: xxxx uidNumber: 9999 objectClass: top objectClass: person objectClass: inetOrgPerson objectClass: posixAccount gidNumber: 999 ... And getent result (with nss_ldap): #getent passwd rinstalle rinstalle:x:9999:999:compte foireux:/home/xx: To be complete, I should mention that it _does_ work when using local password files... I solved the user problem just by copying his entry a few times. Now, I don't think it is purely ldap-related, as the login _is_ accepted. Is there some guru out here who could help us? Thank you, -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yannick Majoros http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros Informaticien AUTO-INMA/FSA/UCL CSAM 4, avenue G. Lemaître B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve Belgium Tel: +32-10-47.80.10 Fax: +32-10-47.21.80 #JAPH : http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros/japh.txt Si vous avez des problèmes pour afficher ce message (accents qui ne passent pas, signature électronique, ...) votre système de mail n'est pas conforme aux standards, voir http://www.inma.ucl.ac.be/~majoros/email.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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[Dovecot] weird IDLE behaviour
by Johannes Berg 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Hi, So I was testing things with inotify notifications enabled and noticed that when I a) select a mailbox other than the inbox b) IDLE c) copy mail into the /new folder in that mailbox nothing happens! So I straced it and it always opens the inbox's new/ and cur/ directories for notifications. Is that the correct behaviour? I assumed that if I select some mailbox other than the inbox, IDLE should inform me of status updates in that box, since RFC 2177 says: The Internet Message Access Protocol [IMAP4] requires a client to poll the server for changes to the selected mailbox (new mail, deletions). Now, I get this behaviour by applying the attached patch. But even if I'm wrong, dovecot doesn't implement any sensible behaviour, as it only ever creates *any* notifications during IDLE when the INBOX is selected. [hm. note that I'm only testing maildir] johannes

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