[Dovecot] troubles with broken clients (iPhone) - again

[Axel Luttgens]

Le 7 juil. 09 à 10:02, Federico Bianchi a écrit :

>
> The PC (Outlook) is accessing the mailbox via POP3, the iPhone is  
> using IMAP; please consider we are talking about a user's home  
> setup, so it's pretty difficult to have a more detailed report on  
> his part (Outlook version, iPhone OS version, xDSL router type and  
> configuration, etc.). The mail server 'dovecot -n' output is attached.
>
> The symptoms: when the Mail application is "closed" on the iPhone,  
> Outlook still says the mailbox is in use; a Dovecot imap process is  
> still active for that user even after a few minutes (manually  
> killing it releases the lock, thereby leaving the inbox available  
> for Outlook).
>
>> From the client side, there is a seemingly relevant article at
>
> 	http://blogs.sun.com/chienr/entry/iphone_supports_imap_idle
>
> it describes, among others, the "Settings / Mail / Auto-Check" and  
> "Settings / General / Auto-Lock" parameters; from my point of view,  
> however, being able to solve the problem directly on the server  
> would be far better, and might also accomodate other broken clients  
> we haven't seen yet: that's why I asked you whether there is a way  
> to tell Dovecot only one POP3 or IMAP process from the same user,  
> the latest one, can be active at the same time, closing and  
> disconnecting all the others.

Hello Frederico,

Thanks for the additional info.

The output of dovecot -n doesn't show mbox_write_locks nor  
mbox_read_locks; it could thus be supposed that the locking methods in  
use are:

	mbox_write_locks = dotlock fcntl
	mbox_read_locks = fcntl

The question is now "who delivers mail to the mailboxes?"; since  
killing the last imap process allows the pop client to open the  
mailbox, one may suspect a deadlock involving the imap and the  
delivery processes.

Could you have a look at

	http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/mbox
	http://wiki.dovecot.org/MboxLocking

HTH,
Axel