[Dovecot] Setting location for indexes

[Chris Wakelin]

Have you tried 'default_mail_env = :INDEX=/var/spool/mail/INDEX/%u'? 
I've not tried it myself, mind you :)

Looking through the code in 1.0-stable, in 
src/lib-storage/index/mbox/mbox-storage.c and 
src/lib-storage/index/maildir/maildir-storage.c it looks for the first 
":" then takes root_dir as the leftmost part and looks for INDEX= and 
INBOX= in the rightmost part. I'm not sure what happens then when 
root_dir is empty (mbox_create and maildir_create return NULL).

You didn't say which version you're using? I think 1.0-test might be 
different again (Timo mentioned re-organising the whole mailbox "driver" 
thing).

Best Wishes,
Chris

dovecot.7.signal11 at spamgourmet.com wrote:
>>>dovecot: IMAP(uid): fstat() failed with file /home/uid/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.log: Stale NFS file handle
>>
>>>(a) why can't it just close the file and re-open ?
>>
>>NFS has issues with files that are open on one client, and get deleted on
>>another. UNIX systems require that files don't disappear while they are in
>>use, but NFS is stateless and it simply can't know when a file is in use.
>>The result is the 'stale NFS handle' kludge, which also prevents a simple
>>close-and-open. Don't use index files on NFS disks.
> 
> 
> First, the file did not disappear - the NFS is flaky under high load, that's
> all. Closing and re-opening the file would probably fix the issue, at least
> after the traffic spike.
> 
> Second, these are files that are intended for dovecots internal use only. If the
> NFS filehandle goes stale, it's anyway highly unlikely that someone else has 
> deleted them, and dovecot should know that - IMHO it should at least try to recover. 
> 
> Third, I'm perfectly willing to put the index files on a local disk, but I need
> dovecot to autodetect the rest of the mail environment, unless I want to define
> it completely for each user individually, and apparently dovecot does not let
> me do that(?).
> 
>>From the (few) answers I got so far, it seems that it is in fact impossible
> to specify 'default_mail_env = INDEX=/var/spool/mail/INDEX/%u', so would
> anybody know where in the sources the root directory for the indexes is set,
> such that I can patch the code?
> 
> 

-- 
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Christopher Wakelin,                           c.d.wakelin at reading.ac.uk
IT Services Centre, The University of Reading,  Tel: +44 (0)118 378 8439
Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK              Fax: +44 (0)118 975 3094