Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy archive - BUG REPORTS!
Arnold Opio Oree
arnoldoree at parallaxict.com
Wed Jul 10 14:40:45 EEST 2019
Hello Aki,
Thank you for your assurance.
It is really important to me to see that things are done well in the open source community. As there are many vested interests that would seek to have it otherwise.
And there are certain parts of the world, such as the place of my birth, Africa. Where Open Source really does hold the key to freedom from the worst forms of oppression and suffering known to man.
Sorry Adam, this will be my last cc on this topic. Just thought it was important to get this point to the Debian Release Management Team.
Warmest regards,
Arnold Opio Oree
Chief Executive Officer
Parallax Digital Technologies
arnoldoree at parallaxdt.com
http://www.parallaxdt.com
tel : +44 (0) 333 577 8587
fax : +44 (0) 20 8711 2477
Parallax Digital Technologies is a trading name of Parallax Global
Limited. U.K. Co. No. 08836288
The contents of this e-mail are confidential. If you are not the
intended recipient you are to delete this e-mail immediately, disregard
its contents and disclose them to no other persons.
--------------------
Understood Adam,
My thinking is that this is a package released with Debian 10. And so
has everything to do with the release.
I am new to the community, and have not yet studied the guidelines.
Regards,
Arnold Opio Oree
Chief Executive Officer
Parallax Digital Technologies
arnoldoree at parallaxdt.com
http://www.parallaxdt.com
tel : +44 (0) 333 577 8587
fax : +44 (0) 20 8711 2477
Parallax Digital Technologies is a trading name of Parallax Global
Limited. U.K. Co. No. 08836288
The contents of this e-mail are confidential. If you are not the
intended recipient you are to delete this e-mail immediately, disregard
its contents and disclose them to no other persons.
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam D. Barratt <adam at adam-barratt.org.uk>
To: arnoldoree at parallaxict.com
Cc: timo at sirainen.com, Dovecot Mailing List <dovecot at dovecot.org>,
debian-release at lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy
archive - BUG REPORTS!
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 12:24:44 +0100
On 2019-07-10 12:01, Arnold Opio Oree wrote:
Please stop CCing this thread to the Debian Release Management mailing
list.
If there are issues with the Dovecot packages in Debian then they
should
be reported as bugs against the packages.
Thanks.
Adam
(Debian Release Team member)
-----Original Message-----
From: Aki Tuomi <aki.tuomi at open-xchange.com>
To: arnoldoree at parallaxict.com, timo at sirainen.com, Dovecot Mailing List
<dovecot at dovecot.org>
Cc: debian-release at lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy
archive - BUG REPORTS!
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:13:53 +0300
Your report is most appreciated, though it lacked quite a lot of detail
that could've expedited the investigation why it happened. With the
further information we can hopefully figure out why you are
experiencing
the problems you reported. There is no offense intended.
Aki
On 10.7.2019 14.01, Arnold Opio Oree via dovecot wrote:
> Hello Timo,
>
> I have scheduled some time to carry through the test requested by
> Aki.
>
> I will add responding to you as part of that process.
>
> Not sure if I have said or done anything to offend you, as your tone
> appears quite abrasive, even where you do not have an actual response
> to an observation.
>
> It is my view that it is a privilege to provide an open source
> platform, and therefore a responsibility wherever feasible not only
> to properly maintain and support it, but also to properly document
> it; both of which from my experience and findings to date, Dovecot
> have failed to do.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Arnold Opio Oree
> Chief Executive Officer
> Parallax Digital Technologies
>
> arnoldoree at parallaxdt.com
>
>
> http://www.parallaxdt.com
>
>
> tel : +44 (0) 333 577 8587
> fax : +44 (0) 20 8711 2477
>
> Parallax Digital Technologies is a trading name of Parallax Global
> Limited. U.K. Co. No. 08836288
>
> The contents of this e-mail are confidential. If you are not the
> intended recipient you are to delete this e-mail immediately,
> disregard
> its contents and disclose them to no other persons.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Timo Sirainen via dovecot <
> dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> Reply-To: Timo Sirainen <
> timo at sirainen.com
> >
> To: Arnold Opio Oree <
> arnold.oree at parallaxict.com
> >
> Cc: Dovecot Mailing List <
> dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> Subject: Re: Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy
> archive - BUG REPORTS!
> Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 11:09:57 +0300
>
> On 7 Jul 2019, at 18.12, Arnold Opio Oree via dovecot <
> dovecot at dovecot.org
> > wrote:
> > > Dovecot Team,
> > >
> > > I'd like to report a number of bugs, that are to my view all
> > > critical.
>
> It would help to get your doveconf -n, example command lines causing
> the problems and the error messages it outputs or what the wrong
> behavior looks like in filesystem. It's now rather difficult to guess
> what exactly you tried and what happened.
>
> Also what kind of output does readpst make? I'm not sure why you're
> using DIRNAMEs here.
>
> > > doveadm-sync -1/general
> > >
> > > 1) If DIRNAMEs are not different between command line and
> > > mail_location doveadm sync will fail, saying that the source and
> > > destination directories are the same
>
> This sounds very strange. I'm not sure what exactly you did, and I
> couldn't reproduce with a small test.
>
> > > 2) The -n / -N flags do not work, and a sync will fail strangely
> > > if
> > > location is specified in the namespace definition
>
> Again, sounds strange.
>
> > > 3) Adds mbox to path name under mailbox directory (where syncing
> >
> > from
> > > an mbox source)
>
> Probably with different parameters you could avoid it.
>
> > > 4) Not having the mailboxes at source named the same as those at
> > > destination causes errors and partial sync
> > >
> > > 5) Not having the target mailboxes formatted to receive the sync
> > > (/<mailboxroot>/DIRNAME/) will cause sync errors.
>
> I don't understand these. Target mailboxes are supposed to be empty
> initially, and after the initial sync they should be in the expected
> format. Why would they be different?
>
> > > doveadm-sync
> > >
> > > 1) With large synchronizations UIDs are corrupted where multiple
> > > syncs are executed and the program can no longer synchronize
>
> What exactly is the error message?
>
> > > dovecot
> > >
> > > 1) Panics and fails to expand ~ to user home: observed cases are
> > > where multiple namespaces are being used
>
> Panic message and more details would also help.
>
> > > With regards to the last error that I requested help on i.e.
> > > \Noselect. This has been resolved more-or-less by the workarounds
> > > that I have implemented for the bugs reported above.
> > >
> > > I have seen a number of threads whilst researching the \Noselect
> > > issue where people have been very confused. My finding was that
> > > \Noselect is a function of the IMAP specification server-side
> > > implementation RFC3501 (
> > > https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.3.6
> > > ). And for me the
> > > server was returning directories with \Noselect because the
> >
> > mailboxes
> > > were malformed on account of dovadm-sync errors. In order to fix
> >
> > this
> > > I formed a bash command to transverse the mailbox hierarchy and
> > > create the missing folders critical to the sdbox format, namely
> > > DIRNAME.
>
> Nowadays we have also an option to disable creation of \Noselect
> folders, because they confuse people. Using mail_location = ...:NO-
> NOSELECT - It won't affect existing folders immediately though.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Arnold Opio Oree <
> arnoldoree at parallaxict.com
> >
> Reply-To:
> arnoldoree at parallaxict.com
>
> To: Aki Tuomi <
> aki.tuomi at open-xchange.com
> >, Dovecot Mailing List <
> dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> Cc:
> debian-release at lists.debian.org
>
> Subject: Re: Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy
> archive - BUG REPORTS!
> Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2019 13:21:51 +0100
>
> Hello Aki,
>
> Thanks for looking into these.
>
> I will as requested attempt the relevant procedures under Dovecot
> 2.3.6.
>
> To make the test fair, I will need to fork the relevant production
> groupware stack (which is now stable and in operation, with our
> enterprise (email) data successfully migrated from Microsoft
> Exchange)
> to a new staging server; given that the current staging server is now
> of a materially different configuration to the production server
> (where
> the most controlled observations of these bugs were made).
>
> Kindly give me some time, as I have an urgent internal openstack
> deployment project to kick-off, that has been delayed by an overrun
> of
> this internal groupware stack deployment project.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Arnold Opio Oree
> Chief Executive Officer
> Parallax Digital Technologies
>
> arnoldoree at parallaxdt.com
>
>
>
> http://www.parallaxdt.com
>
>
>
> tel : +44 (0) 333 577 8587
> fax : +44 (0) 20 8711 2477
>
> Parallax Digital Technologies is a trading name of Parallax Global
> Limited. U.K. Co. No. 08836288
>
> The contents of this e-mail are confidential. If you are not the
> intended recipient you are to delete this e-mail immediately,
> disregard
> its contents and disclose them to no other persons.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aki Tuomi via dovecot <
> dovecot at dovecot.org
>
> Reply-To: Aki Tuomi <
> aki.tuomi at open-xchange.com
>
> To:
> arnoldoree at parallaxict.com
>
> , Arnold Opio Oree <
> arnold.oree at parallaxict.com
>
> > , Arnold Opio Oree via dovecot <
>
> dovecot at dovecot.org
>
> Cc:
> debian-release at lists.debian.org
>
>
> Subject: Re: Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy
> archive - BUG REPORTS!
> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2019 08:48:08 +0300 (EEST)
>
> Hi!
>
> Thank you for reporting these. We will look into them. In the mean
> time, can you see if any of these are fixed in 2.3.6?
>
> Aki
> > On 07/07/2019 18:12 Arnold Opio Oree via dovecot <
> > dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> >
> > > wrote:
> >
> > Dovecot Team,
> >
> > I'd like to report a number of bugs, that are to my view all
> > critical.
> >
> > System: Replicated on multiple Debian 10 (Buster) systems
> > Dovecot Version(s): 2.3.4.1
> >
> > doveadm-sync -1/general
> >
> > 1) If DIRNAMEs are not different between command line and
> > mail_location doveadm sync will fail, saying that the source and
> > destination directories are the same
> >
> > 2) The -n / -N flags do not work, and a sync will fail strangely if
> > location is specified in the namespace definition
> >
> > 3) Adds mbox to path name under mailbox directory (where syncing
> > from
> > an mbox source)
> >
> > 4) Not having the mailboxes at source named the same as those at
> > destination causes errors and partial sync
> >
> > 5) Not having the target mailboxes formatted to receive the sync
> > (/<mailboxroot>/DIRNAME/) will cause sync errors.
> >
> > doveadm-sync
> >
> > 1) With large synchronizations UIDs are corrupted where multiple
> > syncs are executed and the program can no longer synchronize
> >
> > dovecot
> >
> > 1) Panics and fails to expand ~ to user home: observed cases are
> > where multiple namespaces are being used
> >
> > Please let me know if you need me to elaborate or to provide any
> > further information that you may need to replicate the bugs, or if
> > I
> > can help in any other way.
> >
> > With regards to the last error that I requested help on i.e.
> > \Noselect. This has been resolved more-or-less by the workarounds
> > that I have implemented for the bugs reported above.
> >
> > I have seen a number of threads whilst researching the \Noselect
> > issue where people have been very confused. My finding was that
> > \Noselect is a function of the IMAP specification server-side
> > implementation RFC3501 (
> > https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.3.6
> >
> > ). And for me the
> > server was returning directories with \Noselect because the
> > mailboxes
> > were malformed on account of dovadm-sync errors. In order to fix
> > this
> > I formed a bash command to transverse the mailbox hierarchy and
> > create the missing folders critical to the sdbox format, namely
> > DIRNAME.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Arnold Opio Oree
> > Chief Executive Officer
> > Parallax Digital Technologies
> >
> > arnoldoree at parallaxdt.com
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.parallaxdt.com
> >
> >
> >
> > tel : +44 (0) 333 577 8587
> > fax : +44 (0) 20 8711 2477
> >
> > Parallax Digital Technologies is a trading name of Parallax Global
> > Limited. U.K. Co. No. 08836288
> >
> > The contents of this e-mail are confidential. If you are not the
> > intended recipient you are to delete this e-mail immediately,
> > disregard its contents and disclose them to no other persons.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Arnold Opio Oree via dovecot <
> > dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> > Reply-To:
> > arnoldoree at parallaxict.com
> >
> > , Arnold Opio Oree <
> > arnold.oree at parallaxict.com
> >
> > To:
> > dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> >
> > Cc:
> > rs at sys4.de
> >
> > ,
> > aki.tuomi at open-xchange.com
> >
> >
> > Subject: Re: Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy
> > archive.
> > Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2019 14:52:28 +0100
> >
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > The guidance provided so far has been really helpful, and has
> > helped
> > a great deal to bringing down wasted energy on finding and
> > executing
> > a viable path. I am now at the final due action to complete our
> > Dovecot application to our use-case, but am stuck on an issue that
> > I
> > cannot find any easily accessible documentation on.
> >
> > Generally this is what has been done:
> >
> > 1. Uploaded the enterprise data PST to the target groupware server.
> > 2. Prepared the server by changing the mailbox format to sdbox and
> > the the Dovecot mail location to
> > mail_location=/var/vmail/domain/user/mail/
> > 3. Converted the pst (on-server) to a recursive mbox hierarchy
> > using
> > readpst
> > 4. Executed doveadm-sync to convert mbox hierarchy data into sdbox
> > and to copy it into the enterprise archive user's mailboxes
> > 4.i. The biggest issue I faced at this point was doveadm-sync
> > saying
> > that the source and destination pointed to the same location,
> > whereas
> > they clearly did not.
> > 4.i.a. I resolved this by removing the location= setting from the
> > target namespace, and allowing it to default to mail_location =
> > setting, and then using a completely different DIRNAME for the
> > import
> > doveadm-sync execution (which was the desired final DIRNAME); I
> > then
> > once the sync had been successful, changed the mail_location
> > DIRNAME
> > so that it pointed to the imported mail DIRNAME; and hence the
> > imported email data was in the live mailboxes
> > 4.i.b. doveadm-import failed several times, and was throwing quite
> > inexplicable errors, so I moved onto doveadm-sync
> > 4.i.c. I also had to make sure that the source and destination
> > folder
> > names matched, otherwise doveadm-syc threw very many errors and
> > only
> > partially imported the data
> > 4.i.d. An issue which I decided just to live with is that an mbox
> > DIRNAME was added to each mailbox as well as the DIRNAME specified
> > so
> > the path to mail is mbox/dbox-Mails. My thought is that with the
> > data
> > live on an IMAP server it will be possible to do a dysync through
> > TCP
> > to correct this problem.
> >
> > The final issue that I am facing now, is that when readpst finds
> > empty folders in the source pst hierarchy, it does not create an
> > mbox
> > file in the mbox hierarchy folder space. This causes doveadm-sync
> > to
> > not create the target data required for its mailbox structure i.e.
> > DIRNAME sub-folder and index file (with our configuration). At this
> > point either doveadm-sync or the dovecot process makes these empty
> > folders not selectable.
> >
> > The question now is how would I go about making all of these
> > folders
> > selectable, e.g. with an internal or external command line tool to
> > change flags / create necessary sdbox mailbox constituent data?
> >
> > Many thanks,
> >
> > Arnold Opio Oree
> > Chief Executive Officer
> > Parallax Digital Technologies
> >
> > arnoldoree at parallaxdt.com
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.parallaxdt.com
> >
> >
> >
> > tel : +44 (0) 333 577 8587
> > fax : +44 (0) 20 8711 2477
> >
> > Parallax Digital Technologies is a trading name of Parallax Global
> > Limited. U.K. Co. No. 08836288
> >
> > The contents of this e-mail are confidential. If you are not the
> > intended recipient you are to delete this e-mail immediately,
> > disregard its contents and disclose them to no other persons.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Arnold Opio Oree via dovecot <
> > dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> > Reply-To:
> > arnoldoree at parallaxict.com
> >
> > , Arnold Opio Oree <
> > arnold.oree at parallaxict.com
> >
> > To: Robert Schetterer <
> > rs at sys4.de
> >
> > > ,
> >
> > dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> >
> > Subject: Re: Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy
> > archive.
> > Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2019 12:05:35 +0100
> >
> > > Also you may run into client limits.... i ve seen this with
> > > outlook,
> > > apple mail, thunderbird via imap in the past
> >
> > Thanks for this note Robert, it was not really an aspect that I was
> > considering.
> >
> > We are operating our groupware services user access through both
> > Evolution Groupware and KDE Kontact / KMail on Debian Linux
> > workstations. Hopefully if there is a client issue it should be
> > local
> > to only one groupware client.
> >
> > I will be sure to study / investigate in this - client - area
> > should
> > any issues that are not traceable to the server-side arise.
> >
> > Many thanks,
> >
> > Arnold Opio Oree
> > Chief Executive Officer
> > Parallax Digital Technologies
> >
> > arnoldoree at parallaxdt.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.parallaxdt.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > tel : +44 (0) 333 577 8587
> > fax : +44 (0) 20 8711 2477
> >
> > Parallax Digital Technologies is a trading name of Parallax Global
> > Limited. U.K. Co. No. 08836288
> >
> > The contents of this e-mail are confidential. If you are not the
> > intended recipient you are to delete this e-mail immediately,
> > disregard
> > its contents and disclose them to no other persons.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robert Schetterer via dovecot <
> > dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> >
> >
> > Reply-To: Robert Schetterer <
> > rs at sys4.de
> >
> >
> >
> > To:
> > dovecot at dovecot.org
> >
> >
> >
> > Subject: Re: Applying Dovecot for a large / deep folder-hierarchy
> > archive.
> > Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2019 12:53:49 +0200
> >
> > Am 27.06.2019 um 07:35 schrieb Aki Tuomi via dovecot:
> > > On 26.6.2019 22.12, Arnold Opio Oree via dovecot wrote:
> > > > Hello to you all,
> > > >
> > > > I'd like to ask about my intended application of Dovecot to
> > > > create
> > > > a folder-hierarchy for storing our enterprise emails, which are
> > > > treated as live data rather than archives for compliance or
> > > > occasional / reactive retrieval.
> > > >
> > > > The data is presently not that large (a few gigabytes), but it
> > > > is
> > > > expected to grow rapidly. Up to this stage the data has been
> > > > contained
> > > > in a Microsoft Exchange mailbox (2013), and then in an offline
> > > > PST.
> > > > The move to the offline PST was by necessity, as the large
> > > > number
> > > > of
> > > > folders, and depth of hierarchy to my best understanding caused
> > > > the
> > > > exchange server / outlook / evolution mail clients to begin to
> > > > malfunction. To cope with this the archive was broken up and
> > > > the
> > > > bulk stored in the offline PST and the most active components
> > > > stored in
> > > > online Exchange mailboxes.
> > > >
> > > > I have some understanding of the fs mbox format, and also the
> > > > mitigations to be made for certain characters / strings. My
> > > > main
> > > > concern is whether Dovecot is likely to be able to cope well
> > > > with
> > > > a
> > > > large number of folders / depth of hierarcy.
> > > >
> > > > I will really appreciate any help / advice you can give.
> > > >
> > > > Best regards,
> > > >
> > > > Arnold Opio Oree
> > > >
> > >
> > > Hi!
> > >
> > > Dovecot 2.2.34/2.3 supports unlimited folder depth, the only
> > > limiting
> > > factor is that the total name may not exceed 4096 bytes. Also
> > > individual
> > > folder names may not exceed 255 bytes.
> > >
> > > Prior to that the limit is 255 per folder up to 16 levels.
> > >
> > > I can't recommend using 'mbox' storage format, please consider
> > > using
> > > maildir or sdbox instead.
> > >
> > > Aki
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> ---
> Aki Tuomi
>
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