[Dovecot] Catch22: user needs space to fix out of space condition

[Joseph Tam]

On Mon, 29 Aug 2011, Timo Sirainen wrote:

>> Actually, this gives me pause that maybe I should not enirely remove
>> the dotlocking method
>>
>>  	http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/pipermail/alpine-info/2008-July/000996.html
>>
>> Any comments on the (sole) use of POSIX fcntl() type locking?
>
> As long as you haven't used symlinks in your mboxes there's no problems
> with fcntl locking with Dovecot (assuming there are no non-Dovecot
> software writing to them).

Thanks for the info.

I don't meet the last criteria: some users have direct file access via
pine and other mail readers.  There's also procmail, but I don't know
what locking method it uses.  Reading the pine sources closely, I think
it fakes fcntl() for NFS mailboxes.

I'm using dotlock_try which solves my immediate problem of allowing
users to delete Email under full quota.

The long term solution is to replace file access with kerberized IMAP
access, but that's much further down the road.

Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com>