- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] Indexes again
by Timo Sirainen 16 Jul '03

16 Jul '03

A bit quiet here, so here's some more thoughts about indexes. Even though I was thinking only how to make them usable with NFS (I wrote it to doc/nfs.txt), it then occured to me that exactly the same tricks would help with local filesystem indexes as well. Especially the lockless reading would help with lock contention issues I was worrying about earlier with shared mailboxes. Also it occured to me that keeping maildir filenames fully synchronized in index file probably isn't very good idea from performance point of view.. BTW. I almost committed the .tree removal code to CVS today. Then I noticed that expunging ignores about half of the deleted messages. This could have been actually happening with the old code in some situations as well, although it probably would have skipped only a couple of messages. Anyway, fixing this properly takes some more time.. -------- Ideas how to make indexes work pretty well with NFS: Reading shouldn't require locks, so modifying should be done using only atomic operations. These include: - Replacing the file completely using rename() - We probably can't assume that writing more than one byte at a time is atomic. If we have to modify a larger dataset, we could do: - struct { bit_t use_first; dataset_t first; dataset_t second; } - when reading, we use first if use_first is set, second if it's unset - when writing, we first write to the non-used variable, only then we update the flag. - This of course requires twice the amount of space for dataset plus one extra bit, so it shouldn't be used too much - If data can be only set, but never changed, we need only one extra bit to specify if the data is set. - Appending new data to end of file. We'd have to have used_file_size variable in header, done like described above. - Each cached message record would have a pointer to next part, so more cached data could be appended to file. Message flags are the most commonly modified data. If we just modify them directly, a simultaneous read might catch the change only partially. But luckily for us, this is accepted behaviour so we can do it. Another commonly modified data is maildir filenames. We probably want to store only the base name in index and keep the full name synchronized only locally. Compressing unused data from index files would have to be done by rewriting the index into index.lock file and renaming it over the index file. All file operations should probably be done with lseek(), read() and write() to avoid extra network traffic. There should be some clever read-ahead caching however.

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[Dovecot] New indexing code
by Timo Sirainen 14 Jul '03

14 Jul '03

If someone's interested, here's an explanation and test code how I was planning on replacing the current .imap.index.tree file's functionality. The .tree file will be removed so you'll save some disk/memory as well, something like 5-20% of whole indexes.

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RE: [Dovecot] dovecot.procontrol.fi anonymous access fails?
by Maikel Verheijen 14 Jul '03

14 Jul '03

> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 09:23:04AM +0200, Maikel Verheijen wrote: > > When I tried connecting using MS outlook express, it is complaining > > about the fact that the folders aren't subscribed. If they are not > > subscribed, you cannot read them... :( > > OK, added the subscriptions now. Ah great! :) Thanks, Maikel Verheijen.

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RE: [Dovecot] dovecot.procontrol.fi anonymous access fails?
by Maikel Verheijen 14 Jul '03

14 Jul '03

Hi List, When I tried connecting using MS outlook express, it is complaining about the fact that the folders aren't subscribed. If they are not subscribed, you cannot read them... :( I did read through the archives using mutt though, that worked quite well! :) Regards, Maikel Verheijen. Ps: did not try it lately, maybe Timo changed the subscription status of the folders in between.... > -----Original Message----- > From: Timo Sirainen [mailto:tss@iki.fi] > Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 6:10 PM > To: dovecot(a)procontrol.fi > Subject: Re: [Dovecot] dovecot.procontrol.fi anonymous access fails? > > > On Sunday, Jul 13, 2003, at 18:47 Europe/Helsinki, Marco > Molteni wrote: > > > I was using a patched sylpheed that doesn't support ANONYMOUS > > authentication, so I gave anonymous as username and empty password, > > but it failed as shown in the following trace: > > > > 2 LOGIN anonymous > > 2 BAD Error in IMAP command received by server. > > Sylpheed is buggy and doesn't give password parameter. It should have > said: > > 2 login anonymous "" >

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[Dovecot] mySQL user auth status?
by Jesse Peterson 14 Jul '03

14 Jul '03

Is this anywhere near consideration yet? (an alpha/beta/etc patch/module I can help test maybe?) Thanks, - Jesse

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[Dovecot] dovecot.procontrol.fi anonymous access fails?
by Marco Molteni 13 Jul '03

13 Jul '03

Hi, just started using dovecot on FreeBSD. Nice and easy to configure :-) I then wanted to browse the dovecot mailing list, so, according to http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/mailinglists.html: IMAP archives available from dovecot.procontrol.fi, either use ANONYMOUS authentication or give anonymous as username and empty password. I was using a patched sylpheed that doesn't support ANONYMOUS authentication, so I gave anonymous as username and empty password, but it failed as shown in the following trace: 1 CAPABILITY * OK dovecot ready. * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN LISTEXT LIST-SUBSCRIBED AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=ANONYMOUS 1 OK Capability completed. 2 LOGIN anonymous 2 BAD Error in IMAP command received by server. 3 LOGOUT * BYE Logging out 3 OK Logout completed. Anyway, I also tried a plain telnet and it failed in the same way. what's wrong? thanks marco

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Re: [Dovecot] Permission denied
by Timo Sirainen 13 Jul '03

13 Jul '03

On Saturday, Jul 12, 2003, at 11:13 Europe/Helsinki, Jaime Medrano wrote: > That's the problem. The home dir is exported by nfs. Chdirs should be > done as the user, not as root. Right.. Well, I'll just ignore that error then: Index: mail-process.c =================================================================== RCS file: /home/cvs/dovecot/src/master/mail-process.c,v retrieving revision 1.25 retrieving revision 1.26 diff -u -r1.25 -r1.26 --- mail-process.c 10 Jul 2003 03:04:07 -0000 1.25 +++ mail-process.c 12 Jul 2003 15:45:19 -0000 1.26 @@ -168,7 +168,9 @@ if (*home_dir != '\0') { full_home_dir = *chroot_dir == '\0' ? home_dir : t_strconcat(chroot_dir, "/", home_dir, NULL); - if (chdir(full_home_dir) < 0) + /* NOTE: if home directory is NFS-mounted, we might not + have access to it as root. Ignore such errors. */ + if (chdir(full_home_dir) < 0 && errno != EACCES) i_fatal("chdir(%s) failed: %m", full_home_dir); }

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[Dovecot] CVS state
by Timo Sirainen 13 Jul '03

13 Jul '03

Just a small note that if you upgrade to latest CVS, you'll have to delete old index files or you'll probably get wrong BODY or BODYSTRUCTURE replies. Next release will have index file's version number increased so it will automatically rebuild them when needed. I didn't raise it yet since several other changes are likely to come soon.

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[Dovecot] Permission denied
by Jaime Medrano 12 Jul '03

12 Jul '03

Dovecot is faulting on an error about permissions that it shouldn't do. I've got an user with its home dir with permissions 700, and inside the mail directory with the mboxes. In the error log I can see: 'Can't chdir to /home/user. Permission denied' I wonder why it has to chdir to that directory and why it can't access. Shouldn't it be running as the user?

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[Dovecot] FreeBSD /etc/passwd errors
by James Read 12 Jul '03

12 Jul '03

Hi there, I've currently compiled and running dovecot version 0.99.10 on my FreeBSD 4.8 system from the ports and am having problems with authenticating clients with the imap/pop3 service. The error message i get is: Jul 11 19:26:18 dev dovecot: Dovecot starting up Jul 11 19:27:23 dev dovecot-auth: passwd(james): invalid password field '*' Jul 11 19:27:23 dev imap-login: Disconnected [10.0.0.1] On the client system I am using Outlook Express 6 and the password dialog box keeps on comming up. Im sure its somthing to do with my conf file not being configured right, here are the main bits: default_mail_env = mbox:/var/mail/%u client_workarounds = oe6-fetch-no-newmail outlook-idle auth = default auth_userdb = passwd auth_passdb = passwd auth_user = dovecot-auth auth_username_chars = If its somthing simple please point me in the right direction as I feel increadbly dumb because im sure its something to do with the passwd file but just carnt get pass the last hurdle! Many thanks in advanced. James.

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