I'm migrating our mailserver from cyrus 2.0 to Postfix and Dovecot.
We're using maildirs delivered to /var/maildir, which is mounted via NFS from a Netapp. My understanding was that maildir was completely happy in an NFS environment but I've seen a couple messages here recently which mention the dovecot index files not being NFS safe.
Are their any caveats or gotcha's that I need to be aware of?
Thanks, Adam.
I'm migrating our mailserver from cyrus 2.0 to Postfix and Dovecot.
We're using maildirs delivered to /var/maildir, which is mounted via NFS from a Netapp. My understanding was that maildir was completely happy in an NFS environment but I've seen a couple messages here recently which mention the dovecot index files not being NFS safe.
Are their any caveats or gotcha's that I need to be aware of?
You'll probably want to keep them in memory or on local disk. See http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/doc/nfs.txt for more information - default_mail_env needs either ":INDEX=/local/path/to/indexes/%u" or ":INDEX=MEMORY", all machines accessing the mailstore should have sync'd clocks, and all imap servers need separate hostnames.
--Stu
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 15:11:17 +1200 Adam Shand adam@personaltelco.net wrote:
I'm migrating our mailserver from cyrus 2.0 to Postfix and Dovecot.
We're using maildirs delivered to /var/maildir, which is mounted via NFS from a Netapp. My understanding was that maildir was completely happy in an NFS environment but I've seen a couple messages here recently which mention the dovecot index files not being NFS safe.
Are their any caveats or gotcha's that I need to be aware of?
Well, Postfix delivering to Maildir mailboxes is a matter that Wietse isn't particularly fond of. Make sure your mount options are correct in that they provide synchronous link() and rename() semantics.
Matthias Andree matthias.andree@gmx.de writes:
Well, Postfix delivering to Maildir mailboxes is a matter that Wietse isn't particularly fond of. Make sure your mount options are correct in that they provide synchronous link() and rename() semantics.
Whooops. That's a typo, I meant:
Postfix delivering to NFS Maildir mailboxes... (Maildir on a local file system works fine of course, mbox on NFS is inherently unreliable and heavily dependent on working locking.)
Stuart Henderson wrote:
You'll probably want to keep them in memory or on local disk. See http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/doc/nfs.txt for more information - default_mail_env needs either ":INDEX=/local/path/to/indexes/%u" or ":INDEX=MEMORY", all machines accessing the mailstore should have sync'd clocks, and all imap servers need separate hostnames.
Okay that's exactly the information I was looking for, thanks. I assume making this change will take care of these errors:
Jul 27 10:24:02 maus imap(adam): file_wait_lock() failed with index file /var/maildir/adam/.INBOX/.imap.index: No locks available
Matthias Andree wrote:
Postfix delivering to NFS Maildir mailboxes... (Maildir on a local file system works fine of course, mbox on NFS is inherently unreliable and heavily dependent on working locking.)
Isn't the main point of Maildir (as opposed to mbox) that it *is* NFS safe and doesn't require working locking?
Thanks! Adam.
Adam Shand adam@personaltelco.net writes:
Postfix delivering to NFS Maildir mailboxes... (Maildir on a local file system works fine of course, mbox on NFS is inherently unreliable and heavily dependent on working locking.)
Isn't the main point of Maildir (as opposed to mbox) that it *is* NFS safe and doesn't require working locking?
It is, and works (and has workarounds for non-idempotent NFS operations), but Wietse doesn't exactly bless NFS no matter what format you use.
participants (4)
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Adam Shand
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Matthias Andree
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Matthias Andree
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Stuart Henderson