- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] dovecot patch for TCB auth
by Thomas Hummel 08 Mar '05

08 Mar '05

Hi, I'm writing to you on behalf of the Pasteur Institute's (Paris, France) IT team. We're currently using dovecot-0.99.10.5_2 on a FreeBSD 5.3. We're planning to upgrade to dovecot-1.x with an openLDAP user and password database and patch it at the same time to include some authentication feature we're using : Since most of our user currently don't use dovecot at all and still authenticate on a DEC alpha running OSF1 [digital unix] V5.1 732, an authentication profile is maintained for each of them on the system. This user profile is kept in the protected password database, accessible only to trusted programs acting on behalf of the trusted computing base (TCB). Some TCB fields are useful to us so we're planning to use their LDAP attibute equivalents and we wrote a custom LDAP shema that includes those which were missing from the standard openLDAP distribution [see details below]. So we're planning (in fact are about to) patch dovecot-1.x in order to take those LDAP attribute (matching the TCB field of interest to us) into account. To do so, we wrote some documentation (still in a draft state) to extend our understanding of dovecot architecture and authentication process. Of course, we're going to give it (patch + doc) back to you and make it freely available. But we'd like to know if you : - were already working on such a patch or planning to do so - were interested, once done (by us or you) to include it into the official release, since it could interest some other person who runs digital unix with TCB authentication Thanks -- Thomas Hummel | Institut Pasteur, Paris, France <hummel(a)pasteur.fr> | Pôle informatique - systèmes et réseau -------- Here are some details about which attribute we're planning to use and their TCB equivalents uidNumber ~ u_id uid ~ u_name userPassword ~ u_pwd shadowLastChange ~ u_succhg shadowExpire ~ u_expdate shadowMax ~ u_life shadowWarning ~ u_exp [ shadowWarning = u_life - u_exp] plus the one we wrote : maxTries ~ u_maxtries [ maximum number of consecutive unsuccessful login attempts to the account that are permitted until the account is disabled ] numUnsucLog ~ u_numunsuclog [ number of unsuccessful login attempts to the account. It is reset when a successful login to the account occurs.] Lock ~ u_lock [ A boolean indicating if the account is locked ]

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[Dovecot] mail-cache-transaction.c error
by F. Even 08 Mar '05

08 Mar '05

Hello all. I've just recently (this last weekend) migrated to Dovecot on my FreeBSD 4.x box. So far, so good, I like it a lot, and plan on moving mboxes to Maildirs sometime this next weekend. BUT....I've currently run into a problem. I'm seeing an error when one user account tries to access the INBOX from Squirrelmail: Mar 6 16:50:59 cerebus dovecot: IMAP(problemuser): file mail-cache- transaction.c: line 250 (mail_cache_transaction_reserve_more): assertion failed: (size >= 2) I'm using 1.0-test63: Mar 6 04:17:47 cerebus dovecot: Dovecot v1.0-test63 starting up I've since blown away the .imap folder for this user and tried again, it still fails. Other user accounts are having no problems. Here are the relevant log snippets: Mar 6 16:18:02 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: noproblems [127.0.0.1] Mar 6 16:48:48 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: problemuser [127.0.0.1] Mar 6 16:48:49 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: problemuser [127.0.0.1] Mar 6 16:48:52 cerebus dovecot: IMAP(problemuser): file mail-cache- transaction.c: line 250 (mail_cache_transaction_reserve_more): assertion failed: (size >= 2) Mar 6 16:48:52 cerebus dovecot: child 64331 (imap) killed with signal 6 Mar 6 16:48:52 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: problemuser [127.0.0.1] Mar 6 16:50:42 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: problemuser [127.0.0.1] Mar 6 16:50:59 cerebus dovecot: IMAP(problemuser): file mail-cache- transaction.c: line 250 (mail_cache_transaction_reserve_more): assertion failed: (size >= 2) Mar 6 16:50:59 cerebus dovecot: child 64391 (imap) killed with signal 6 Mar 6 16:52:54 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: problemuser [127.0.0.1] Mar 6 16:52:57 cerebus last message repeated 2 times Mar 6 16:52:58 cerebus dovecot: IMAP(problemuser): file mail-cache- transaction.c: line 250 (mail_cache_transaction_reserve_more): assertion failed: (size >= 2) Mar 6 16:52:58 cerebus dovecot: child 64420 (imap) killed with signal 6 Mar 6 16:53:31 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: noprob2 [127.0.0.1] Mar 6 16:53:54 cerebus last message repeated 4 times Mar 6 16:56:12 cerebus last message repeated 12 times Mar 6 16:58:12 cerebus last message repeated 11 times Mar 6 16:58:30 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: noproblems [127.0.0.1] Mar 6 16:58:34 cerebus last message repeated 2 times Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Frank

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[Dovecot] Upgrade to new server question
by John Peacock 08 Mar '05

08 Mar '05

I'm vainly trying to get a new server ready to become the default mail server. We have a SAN, so I don't need to move the mailboxes (I can mount the same partition from both machines), but the question is what version of dovecot to load. I'm assuming that I cannot run both 0.99.14 and 1.00.x on the same maildirs (the indexes differ?). However, is it safe for me to mount the same maildirs from two different boxes? John -- John Peacock Director of Information Research and Technology Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite H Lanham, MD 20706 301-459-3366 x.5010 fax 301-429-5748

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[Dovecot] 1.0-test63 released
by Timo Sirainen 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

http://dovecot.org/test/ A new test release for a change. Fixed several problems with indexes, especially related to transaction log rotating (pretty easy to find bugs when you set them to be rotated every 5 seconds and keep bombing the same mailbox with 10 test clients). Please report both new and old bugs. The changes might have fixed lots of different randomly occuring problems. The most important bugfixes were also done to dovecot-stable. The tarball is already updated. Looking at changelog, there seems to be: - Don't crash if client disconnects in the middle of APPEND - LDAP and static passdbs can return "extra parameters" (http://wiki.dovecot.org/AuthSpecials) now. Only SQL did before. - Added "nice" extra parameter for userdb to set imap/pop3 process's priority - RPA/SQL passdb patches from Andrey - Major rearrangements (again) to auth code: - Blocking passdbs (SQL) now create auth worker processes to do the actual blocking work. auth_worker_max_count setting specifies the maximum number of these processes to create. PAM and checkpassword code should be fixed to use this method as well. - Fallback to using expired records from auth cache if database lookups fail. - multiple auth setting blocks still not working - Transaction logs are now rotated when they're over 128kB and created (not updated as before) more than 5 minutes ago. So with high traffic mailboxes the log file shouldn't grow forever anymore.. - other fixes and cleanups

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[Dovecot] Too many open files, etc.
by Martin Preen 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Hello, a few days ago I switched out UW-server installation to dovecot 0.99.14 (Solaris 9). There were a few client issues, but mostly the migration was ok. But I have still some questions/problems: +) dovecot-auth: ... PAM: pipe() failed: Too many open files I increased the max. number of open files. Is this normal behaviour, that more than 512 open files are needed ? +) we're using mbox on NFS and index files on local disks. When building the index files for the first time, it takes (of course) a long time for large folders. But we have these users, and this will happen sometimes. Is there a way to improve performance ? +) in general dovecot saves a lot of NFS-bandwidth compared to UW-imap. Thats what I was looking for. But there also seems to be a problem with large inboxes (> 10 MB) and/or large attachments. Is this right ? One user currently gets this error from Pine when accessing a large attachment: MAIL FOLDER "INBOX" CLOSED DUE TO ACCESS ERROR. AFAIK this error is related to some timeout problem. Has anyone seen this (and a solution for it) ? Thanks. Martin ----------------------------------------------------------------- Martin Preen, Universitaet Freiburg, Institut fuer Informatik Georges-Koehler-Allee, Geb.52, Zi.00-006, 79110 Freiburg, Germany phone: ++49 761 203-8250 preen(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de fax: ++49 761 203-8242 www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de

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[Dovecot] Can't create subfolders of my INBOX or delete folders with IMAP
by Matthew Exon 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Hi, I've been using the dovecot IMAP server for about a year now, and basically it works. But there's an annoying problem, that I can't make any subfolders. I can only make folders that are at the same level as my INBOX folder. Worse, I can't delete folders once I've created them. I'm using Debian unstable on both the server machine and my client machine. The dovecot version is 0.99.13. For my mail client, I'm using Mozilla Thunderbird version 1.0. I've done a bit of investigation on my filesystem, and by googling for all kinds of stuff, but I'm really drawing a blank on this particular problem. Most of the general linux email documentation I've found either doesn't mention IMAP, or doesn't mention dovecot, or both. I can barely find any references to the concept of "subfolder" at all. I really don't want to know anything about email servers, I just want the bloody thing to work. Trying to figure out what the hell's going on is really frustrating! On the server, I seem to have various mailboxes distributed around the place. I've got a mail box in /var/spool/mail. I've got a file ~/mbox, which seems to be very old and is therefore probably a red herring. I've also got a directory ~/Mail with a bunch of files in, one for each of my folders. Having some of my mail in /var/spool, and some in my home directory, seems a really horrible way of arranging things, but anyway... Various online sources seem to suggest that maildir is better than mbox. I don't have any particular preference for one or the other, but I don't want to change if I don't have to because: 1) From experience, I don't screw with settings if I don't have to. Debian made it that way, and changing it behind Debian's back is a surefire way to cause trouble later. 2) Any other accounts on that machine (especially ones I might create in future) will probably still be mbox, causing even worse confusion later. 3) Porting mailboxes is always risky, and I don't want to lose my mail, or have incoming email dropped, or accidentally corrupt it, or anything like that. So I'm not going to do any of that unless I'm sure that it's actually going to fix the subfolder problem, and until now I haven't found any information anywhere to guarantee that that's the case. Intuitively I can guess that if a folder is just a big file full of concatenated email, then making a subfolder is going to be pretty much impossible, but I don't want to guess here. The actual symptoms in thunderbird are: When I select "New folder...", I get the "Create as a subfolder of:" dropdown hierarchy box thingy, but the "Inbox" option is greyed out (side complaint: no user interface should ever have a greyed out option without providing an explanation as to why it's not available, and what you should do if you want it to be available. Displaying it like that is just cruelly teasing the user). When I try to delete a folder, I get a dialog box saying "The current command did not succeed. The mail server responded: Mailbox doesn't exist: <name of folder>". This is pretty frustrating, because I can *see* the damn thing in thunderbird. (another side complaint: "The current command"? You're *running* the bloody command, you should have a better description than that!) For some reason though, I can rename a folder with no problems. I went into /var/log/ on the server, to see what was in the Dovecot log file about the server errors above, but there *is* no log file, nor anything in the syslog. That can't be good. How do you tell the sysadmin when there's a problem? Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can fix this? And if possible, I want to fix this the Debian way, that is by modifying a debconf setting or a /etc/default file or something like that, so that when I upgrade Debian, or uninstall dovecot and then reinstall it, it'll be handled gracefully. Thanks, Matthew Exon

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[Dovecot] pop before smtp
by F. Even 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

I'm using the latest version of dovecot on my FreeBSD 4.x box with OpenPKG to keep other services up to date. Now...I'm able to get pbsmtp to allow relaying through postfix on this server using UW IMAP, but I would like to get dovecot working with relaying...but pbsmtp is not adding the ip when I uncomment the dovecot section after I authenticate. The log is below: [root@cerebus:/opt/sbin] ./pop-before-smtp --version version: 1.36 Mar 4 05:14:09 cerebus last message repeated 5 times Mar 4 05:19:46 cerebus dovecot: Killed with signal 15 Mar 4 05:20:00 cerebus dovecot: Dovecot v1.0-test62 starting up Mar 4 05:20:34 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: user [ip.ad.dr.ess] Mar 4 05:30:21 cerebus dovecot: imap-login: Login: user [ip.ad.dr.ess] I had uncommented the stock pattern in the latest version to no avail: # For Dovecot POP3/IMAP #$pat = '^(... .. ..:..:..) \S+ (?:dovecot: )? (?:imap|pop3)-login: ' . # 'Login: \S+ \[(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)\]'; Thanks for any help anyone might be able to provide. Frank

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[Dovecot] No 'from' in messages
by Remy Zandwijk 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

Hi all, Over the weekend, we've migrated our old mail environment to Sendmail and Dovecot: - Dovecot 1.0 stable - Sendmail 8.13.3 - Procmail 3.22 Procmail is MDA for Sendmail and it delivers mail to Maildir boxes. Email clients like Eudora, Thunderbird, Outlook and mutt are working OK. When using Outlook Express and Pine however, in the message list the 'from' or 'sender' field is empty. This means users of these programs cannot see who did send the mail to them. When running Dovecot 0.99 in a early test period, this problem did not occur. Question: Did anyone see this behaviour before and how to fix it? Best regards, Remy Zandwijk

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[Dovecot] Dovecot 1.0-stable .deb file?
by Ian R. Justman 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

Hi, all. I know that there's no official Dovecot 1.0-stable .deb, given Timo's recommendations. However, does anyone have even an "unofficial" deb of it for, say, Sarge? I want to use 1.0's ability to use both mbox and maildir; the latter is very helpful for dealing with mailing lists. Thanks in advance for any help. --Ian.

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[Dovecot] Password scheme overides
by Andrew Hutchings 06 Mar '05

06 Mar '05

I notice in the wiki you can have password sceme overides (such as {PLAIN}password). Would this work with the password fields in SQL databases (as it isn't clear in the wiki or conf file)? Regards Andrew -- Andrew Hutchings Linux Guru Netserve Consultants Ltd. http://www.domaincity.co.uk/

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