[Dovecot] corrupt mbox, mailboxes not found, and message read status

Timo Sirainen tss at iki.fi
Thu Jul 31 05:58:32 EEST 2003


On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 00:30, Jared wrote:
> pop3(username): Error indexing mbox file /home/username/mail/inbox: LF 
> not found where expected
> 
> I've had one user that this was not the case.  They said they were 
> deleting lots of messages in IMP and when he went back to his inbox, it 
> was empty.  When I looked at the mbox file, a message had been 
> truncated.  When I deleted the imap index and removed that truncated 
> message, the mailbox became visible again.

Hm. A truncated message shouldn't corrupt the whole mbox, at least if
you delete index file..

Of course the truncation itself isn't good either. Could it be because
you've set Dovecot to use different locking methods than your MTA? I
haven't noticed corruption myself yet and I use mboxes all the time.
Maybe I've been lucky though.

I'll probably also rewrite most of the mbox handling code in a few
months..

> Has the adjacent From issue been fixed?

Not yet, but it will be.

> Is there a way to find out more specifically what part of the mbox file 
> dovecot is unhappy about?  ie. a line number.

No. Hmm. Counting line numbers is a bit too kludgy to add, but exact
offset would be possible.

> Inside IMP several users have set up a filter to send messages marked 
> as spam by SpamAssassin into a spam folder.  When they log-in or click 
> the filter icon, the filter runs.  However, now when the the filter 
> runs, it reports: "Problem with filter rule 1: folder does not exist: 
> mail/spam".  However, the spam folder is still there, and when I open 
> that folder in IMP, it opens just fine.  I've already changed IMP's 
> folder prefix from 'mail/' to ''.  I've also tried deleting the imap 
> index.  The message still shows up and the filter fails to run.

Looks like IMP still tries to use mail/ prefix for the filter. Does the
filter configuration have the mailbox set to mail/spam? Just guessing,
I've never used IMP.

> With the old set-up, when I check mail with a pop3 client, the UW pop 
> server modifies the Status and/or X-Keywords headers for the message.  
> When the mailbox is viewed with an IMAP client such as IMP, messages 
> that have already been downloaded via pop are marked as read.  This 
> doesn't seem to happen with dovecot.  I found a Oct 19 2003 thread
> ( http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/list/dovecot/2002-October/000774.html ) 
> on the mailing list where Timo said he was intending to use the 
> X-Keywords trick.  Did this ever get implemented?

X-Keywords have been used for a long time now. It's possible to set
\Seen flag for messages downloaded with POP3, but I don't know if it's
worth the trouble. Who uses POP3 and IMAP mixed anyway?




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