[Dovecot] Index cache errors worse with 2.2.x

[Alexander 'Leo' Bergolth]

On 23.05.2014 22:03, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>>>> On 5/7/2014 4:38 PM, Alexander 'Leo' Bergolth <leo at strike.wu.ac.at> wrote:
>>>>> I am getting "Cached message size smaller than expected" errors since
>>>>> dovecot-2.1.x.
>>>>
>>> I tried dovecot 2.2.7, 2.2.10 and 2.2.12. All of them produce tha same
>>> errors. ("Cached message size smaller than expected", sometimes followed
>>> by "read... Invalid argument".)
>>
>> This really drives me to despair! :-(
>> Timo please help!
>
> I highly recommend switching away from mbox format. This of course
> should be fixed, but mbox code is currently pretty low priority on my
> list of things to fix.

I'd understand and support that if we were talking about some esoteric 
unusual mailbox format.

However, mbox is still standard for many distributions and is used in a 
huge number of small-scale mailserver installations.

Dovecots documentation doesn't mention that mbox support is broken. 
Quite contrary even the homepage states: "while still supporting the 
standard mbox and Maildir formats". The mbox Wiki page says that mbox is 
standard on usual Unix systems and praises dovecots indexing: "the mbox 
format is typically thought of as a slow format. However with Dovecot's 
indexing this isn't true."

Timo, I really appreciate your work on dovecot. I am successfully using 
dovecot (and mbox) for more then 10 years now and I still believe that 
it is the number one choice.

However, I think this misleading information should really be replaced 
with big fat warnings about broken mbox support. Moreover the linux 
distributions should be warned to not ship mbox mail delivery 
configurations by default.

I'll consider switching to another mailbox format but such a migration 
is not a snap decision, it has to be well considered. I cannot switch 
overnight and thus it's really frustrating having to accept a broken 
mail system for the meantime. Deprecation warnings would have helped here.

Cheers,
--leo
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