[Dovecot] Distributed indexes, maildir_copy_preserve_filename, and Microsoft

[Jack Stewart]

Hi,

I've just completed a migration from Courier to a Dovecot 1.0.7 (patched 
RHE 5) which is working great, except for this weirdness of an issue 
that is impacting a handful of users. My question is that will turning 
off maildir_copy_preserve_filename help or hurt in a situation where 
there are multiple servers with their own local INDEX files (uidlist is 
shared)?

The problem is that a few users on a few versions of Microsoft Mail 
clients are not showing a few messages. They can see the messages just 
fine in webmail and other, more typical, E-mail clients.

I know that the right solution is to upgrade to 1.1.2 and use shared 
indexes. The plan is to upgrade in a month or so. In my defense, this 
setup was not of my making,

The two things issues that might have an impact are that we have shared 
(NFS) maildirs on multiple servers with their own local indexes and 
maildir_copy_preserve_file turned on. The uidlist (CONTROL) is shared 
and we have sticky connections turned on in our load balancer. The vast 
majority of clients do not have this issue. Quite frankly I have no idea 
  these clients are ignoring the dovecot-uidlist.

Would turning off maildir_copy_preserve_filename help with this setup?

Another option might be easier is to delete the users INDEX and let the 
clients rebuild them.

Since this is only a handful of users and we are migrating to 1.1.2 
anyway, my preference is to make the bare minimum of changes to help 
address this problem. The changes need not be perfect nor anytime more 
than a suggestion or preference. I just want to make things better for a 
little while.

Many thanks in advance.

---Jack

P.S. The performance improvement is amazing - anywhere from 2X to 12X 
depending on what metrics you are looking at. It isn't an apples to 
apples comparison since we upgraded the servers as well but the "old" 
servers are pretty powerful beasts.

--
Jack Stewart
jstewart at caltech.edu / 626-395-4690
http://www.imss.caltech.edu