[Dovecot] 1.0.beta6 released - a couple pop3 issues

[Ken A]

Answering my own questions here, but for anyone else who's running 
Dovecot as a pop3/pop3s only server, with simple /var/spool/mail/mbox 
files, and no user home directories, here is a setup that works:

default_mail_env = 
mbox:/var/dovecot/%n:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%n:INDEX=/var/dovecot/%n

This seems a little counter-intuitive, but it works.

The pop3 locking error can be modified in src/pop3/client.c to be more 
appropriate. The error can be made conditional on the type of 
lock/storage error returned, but I'm not much of a C programmer, so I 
won't post my code for that! :-)

The lock timeout can be changed to 15 sec in the dovecot.conf so that 
pop locks don't cause 5 minute waits for users.

Ken A
Pacific.Net


Ken A wrote:
> 
> Dovecot's pop server with pop3_lock_session = yes will wait 5 min, by
> default (lock_timeout = 300) and then say "-ERR No INBOX for user."
> 
> I think the error message should come back sooner and say something more
> appropriate, like "-ERR Mailbox is locked. Is another session active?".
> The error message is easy to change in src/pop3/client.c. The problem 
> then is that the mailbox file may not exist if this is a new user.
> 
> I also found that dovecot will create a directory if no mbox file exists
> yet. This causes "Internal error occurred" messages in the log, since
> the mbox should be a plain file, not a directory.
> 
> I might have something wrong in my dovecot.conf file that is causing
> this though. Here's my "default_mail_env" line:
> 
> default_mail_env =
> mbox:/var/spool/mail/%n:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%n:INDEX=/dovecot_indexes/%n
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> Ken A
> Pacific.Net
> 
> 
> 
> Timo Sirainen wrote:
>> On Apr 13, 2006, at 2:42 AM, Ken A wrote:
>>
>>> # Keep the mailbox locked for the entire POP3 session.
>>> pop3_lock_session = yes
>>>
>>> This doesn't seem to work yet. (linux, dovecot beta 7 with default 
>>> locking)
>>
>> Looks like I forgot one part of the code:
>>
>> Index: src/master/mail-process.c
>> ===================================================================
>> RCS file: /var/lib/cvs/dovecot/src/master/mail-process.c,v
>> retrieving revision 1.88
>> diff -u -r1.88 mail-process.c
>> --- src/master/mail-process.c   12 Apr 2006 19:40:23 -0000      1.88
>> +++ src/master/mail-process.c   13 Apr 2006 00:54:28 -0000
>> @@ -241,6 +241,8 @@
>>                 env_put("POP3_REUSE_XUIDL=1");
>>         if (set->pop3_enable_last)
>>                 env_put("POP3_ENABLE_LAST=1");
>> +       if (set->pop3_lock_session)
>> +               env_put("POP3_LOCK_SESSION=1");
>>         if (set->mbox_dirty_syncs)
>>                 env_put("MBOX_DIRTY_SYNCS=1");
>>         if (set->mbox_very_dirty_syncs)
>>
>>> I can telnet to the server, login and then hit it with a normal pop3 
>>> client and I'm still able to download mail. I'd expect to see an 
>>> error message "Mailbox locked, Is another session active?"
>>
>> Currently it just waits a couple of minutes for the lock and then 
>> gives some error message.
> 
>