- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] Maildir unreliability
by Timo Sirainen 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

Looks like maildir can't be used very realiably without quite a lot of locking. Writing and scanning the directory would have to be locked, but reading wouldn't (as long as the file hasn't been renamed which would require scanning to find it). So much for "no locks needed".. The problem is that opendir()/readdir() may temporarily not return some files if there has been changes in the directory since the opendir(). That means Dovecot thinks a message is expunged, while in fact it really isn't, and the next scan would usually show it again. Currently when that happens, Dovecot usually prints an error message about it and rebuilds indexes. Of course, in real life clients aren't often bombing the same mailbox with tons of changes in multiple connections, which is usually needed to trigger this. I wrote a test program which tests this: http://dovecot.org/tmp/readdir.c I'd like to hear if you can run it in some system without errors. I tested Linux 2.4 and 2.6 with ext2, ext3, xfs and reiser3, Solaris 8/ufs and OpenBSD 3.5/sparc64. Only OpenBSD passed the test, but I'm not sure if it's only because the computer was so slow and didn't switch between processes hard enough. I'd be especially interested about FreeBSD and various NFS systems. If it actually works properly in some systems, I guess I'll make the extra locking configurable.

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[Dovecot] dovecot-auth crash
by Dan Sully 26 Oct '04

26 Oct '04

#0 io_remove (io=0x0) at ioloop.c:51 51 if ((io->condition & IO_NOTIFY_MASK) != 0) { (gdb) bt #0 io_remove (io=0x0) at ioloop.c:51 #1 0x0804fbd8 in auth_client_connection_destroy_wait (conn=0x8083f10) at auth-client-connection.c:494 #2 0x0805093d in auth_callback (request=0x847e0f0, result=134681075, reply=0x0, reply_size=0) at auth-client-connection.c:104 #3 0x080507c0 in auth_client_input (context=0x8083f10) at auth-client-connection.c:286 #4 0x0805f042 in io_loop_handler_run (ioloop=0x8082b88) at ioloop-poll.c:184 #5 0x0805e4e8 in io_loop_run (ioloop=0x8082b88) at ioloop.c:218 #6 0x08052415 in main (argc=1, argv=0x0) at main.c:296 This is on Linux 2.6.7 / glibc 2.3.1, dovecot test-51 -D -- Down, not across.

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Re: [Dovecot] Maildir unreliability
by Timo Sirainen 25 Oct '04

25 Oct '04

On 25.10.2004, at 11:04, Peter Evans wrote: > Are you sure its maildir that is the issue, I am sure God Emperor DJB > would have issues with any such statement maligning the holy grail. > > The issue looks to me like it is attribute caching, and thus not > actually > specific to Maildir, just aggravated by it. Well, it's not maildir issue itself, but maildir more or less relies on readdir() not losing renamed files. I'm not sure what you mean by attribute caching, because it's not just with NFS. I'm sure if you point that out to DJB he just says it's not a real problem, because it doesn't happen hardly ever except with some stress test tools, or mailboxes with _many_ simultaneous users. Or maybe with a heavily loaded server. Or ... In any case, I'd rather make Dovecot resistant to this problem entirely rather than hope that everyone uses maildirs only in optimal conditions.

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[Dovecot] dovecot and new mail notification for subfolders in Mail.app
by Alan Schmitt 25 Oct '04

25 Oct '04

Hello, I am using dovecot as an IMAP server to which Mail.app (Apple Mail) connects. However I do not get any notification of new mails in folders other than the inbox, unless I disconnect and reconnect Mail.app or click on the folder with new mail. I'm pretty sure the problem comes from Mail.app. I have searched on Google for how to go around this issue, and have not yet found a solution. If someone here uses Mail.app and dovecot, I'd be really glad to have some advice as to what to do. (by the way, and this is probably related: new folders created in the maildir structure do not get reflected in Mail.app until I disconnect and reconnect). Thanks a lot, Alan Schmitt -- The hacker: someone who figured things out and made something cool happen. .O. ..O OOO

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[Dovecot] index files
by Jonathan Salomon 25 Oct '04

25 Oct '04

Hi Timo, I am sorry to bug you about this, but I am a bit confused and I have approx 200 users so I don't want to screw this up. I am using the latest FC2 Dovecot RPM: dovecot-0.99.10.5-0.FC2. I am using NFS to mount the /home dirs on the fileserver from the mailserver with mbox. In the docs you said that I should probably use :INDEX=MEMORY. However I think this really pushes the server to its limits with large mailboxes (I have sometimes loads of 8+!). Also I want to use mailaccounts that are shared by users (to multiple users acces the same mailbox simulateously). If I write the index file to a location on the filesystem, will this improve performance and still work with simultaneous logins? Should I upgrade to version 1.00.something because I read somewhere you rewrote the mbox functions? Thanks again, Jonathan

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[Dovecot] [PATCH] Request for testing: BSD kqueue ioloop handler
by Andrey Panin 25 Oct '04

25 Oct '04

Hello, attached patch adds experimental ioloop handler which uses BSD kqueue API. It compiles and survives my small test program, but not thoroughly tested because I have no suitable BSD machine to torture. Brave owners of (Free|Net|Open)BSD please test and report results :) Best regards. -- Andrey Panin | Linux and UNIX system administrator pazke(a)donpac.ru | PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net

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[Dovecot] [PATCH] move iolist functions into separate file
by Andrey Panin 25 Oct '04

25 Oct '04

Hello, attached patch extracts iolist related functions into separate file and makes it a little more generic. This functions will be used by the new ioloop handler based on the BSD kqueue API. Please consider applying. Best regards. -- Andrey Panin | Linux and UNIX system administrator pazke(a)donpac.ru | PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net

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[Dovecot] Period at end of folder in Pine
by doug＠dovecot.con.com 24 Oct '04

24 Oct '04

When using folder-name completion, Pine sticks a period at the end of dovecot mediated IMAP folder names. This is invalid, of course, and I end up having to backspace the period to use the proper name. Anyone have a clue on a workaround? I'd imagine this is a FAQ type issue.... Thanks, Doug

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[Dovecot] login with alias
by Gasha 24 Oct '04

24 Oct '04

Hi all, i'm setting up mail server and here is the question: if, for example "firstname.lastname(a)domain.com" is e-mail address, then how can i setup login as "firstname.lastname" and "password" not only "firstname". Of course, users want all things simple. But i don't want to use login names longer than 8 chars. Any ideas? Or should i try to create users as "firstname.lastname" in /etc/passwd file ?? Gasha

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[Dovecot] 1.0-test51
by Timo Sirainen 23 Oct '04

23 Oct '04

http://dovecot.org/test/ This release is built with autoconf 2.59 and libtool 1.9. We'll see how it works out :) The required changes were done by Matthias Andree. - The last fix for connection hanging made IDLE use 100% CPU - We don't use Maildir/.INBOX/ directory anymore, indexes are stored in Maildir-root - Don't crash with FETCH BODY[n.MIME] - Changed %p (protocol) -> %s (service) and %P (pid) -> %p. Hopefully people weren't using these much yet :) - Added simple caching for sql passdb requests. Should be implemented soon for sql userdb and ldap passdb/userdb. See auth_cache_size and auth_cache_ttl settings. By default it's disabled.

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