[Dovecot] failed: Too many levels of symbolic links

[Timo Sirainen]

On 6.1.2012, at 23.41, David Egbert wrote:

> On 1/6/2012 2:16 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>> On 6.1.2012, at 22.44, David Egbert wrote:
>> 
>>> dovecot: imap(XXXXX at XXXXX.com): Error: readdir(/XXXX/XXXX/XXXXXXXXX/XXXXX/XXXXXXX/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/XXX) failed: Too many levels of symbolic links
>> You have a symlink loop. Either a symlink that points to itself or one of the parent directories.
>> 
> I thought that might have been the case, but I checked and there are no symlinks in that directory, or any of the directories above it in the path.  All of the directories and files were created by dovecot.  I didn't notice this in the logs until recently.  The files are stored on an NFS Raid if that makes any difference.

Well, then.. You have a bit too many Xes in there for me to guess which readdir() is the one failing. I guess it's /new or /cur for a Maildir?

Anyway, readdir() is failing with ELOOP. Does it always fail with "Too many levels of symbolic links" or is it sometimes different? This sounds like a bug in Linux NFS client code. You can reproduce this always with this one user's Maildir? Can you do "ls" in the directory?