[Dovecot] Maildir++ quota inconsistency

[Anand Buddhdev]

On Thursday 31 August 2006 17:00, Magnus Holmgren wrote:

> > Exim's behaviour is consistent with the courier family of packages,
> > as well as the specification, so I'm venturing to say that
> > Dovecot's implementation is slightly non-standard, and should be
> > fixed so that the quota setting is interpreted as bytes, and not as
> > kilobytes, to avoid a situation like the above.
>
> I'm not sure I understand you. Both Dovecot and Exim interpret the
> contents of maildirsize correctly, don't they? The problem seems to

Yes, Exim and Dovecot both interpret the contents of maildirsize 
properly. It's how they create the file which is different.

> be that the quota set in Dovecot's configuration doesn't match the
> quota set in Exim's configuration. You can always get them to match
> up by setting the quota in bytes in Exim, but it would have to be a
> multiple of 1000 bytes (1 kB). So you want to be able to specify the
> quota in bytes in Dovecot as well, so that you can use any number,
> and, in particular, Exim's K and M shorthands (which, unfortunately,
> mean kibibytes and mebibytes, respectively) in its configuration
> file?

Yes, well, Exim is highly configurable, so I can make it do anything 
with the quota figures. But the issue is this:

I have my user accounts in a mysql database. In the quota column, if I 
store the value '275', Dovecot interprets that as 275 kB, and if 
Dovecot was the first to create the maildirsize file, it will 
write '275000S' into the file. Exim on the other hand, will interpret 
that quota as 275 bytes. Of course, with Exim, I can work all kinds of 
magic, and append '000' to the value it gets back from the query. I 
could also just append a 'K' to the value Exim gets back from the 
query, but then Exim multiplies the value by 1024, and not 1000.

> Aside from this, I wonder if Exim really should change the quota
> specified in a maildirsize file, and not just use it as the default
> value for a newly-created maildir. Isn't the maildirsize file the
> best central place to store per-user quotas?

Actually, I believe that Exim is doing the right thing. I quote the 
Maildir++ quota specification:

"The first line contains a copy of the quota definition as used by the 
system's mail server. Each application that uses the maildir must know 
what it's quota is. Instead of configuring each application with the 
quota logic, and making sure that every application's quota definition 
for the same maildir is exactly the same, the quota specification used 
by the system mail server is saved as the first line of the maildirsize 
file. All other application that enforce the maildir quota simply read 
the first line of maildirsize."

I interpret that to mean that the maildirsize file's contents should be 
dependent upon what the MTA dictates (in this case Exim). Courier MTA 
behaves similarly, overwriting the maildirsize file if its opinion of 
the quota is different from what's in the file. This is a good thing, 
because I can change a user's quota by modifying a value in the mysql 
database, for example. The next time Exim or Courier does a delivery, 
it will update the file with the new quota.

Anyway, like I said, Exim is so flexible, that it can do anything, and I 
can make it work with Dovecot's interpretation of quotas very easily. 
All I'm saying is that Dovecot's interpretation of the quota as 
kilobytes instead of bytes is not consistent with the specification or 
with 2 known implementations (Courier and Exim), and it might be a good 
idea to correct it now, before release 1.0 comes out. Who knows what 
kind of interoperability problems this might cause in the future, 
especially if more applications begin supporting Maildir++ quotas.

Timo, what's your opinion?

--
Anand