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J Moore | 1 Dec 2004 20:44

Re: Maildir/mbox on a per-user basis

On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 02:41:02PM -0500, the unit calling itself Jon Nathan wrote:

<re-structured for clarity>

> > Just out of curiosity, why would you want to use both formats for 
> > storage?
>
> Some of the users have personal preferences.  We default to mbox,
> but some people would rather use Maildir.  They take care of delivery
> to the Maildirs on their own (with procmail recipes) and take
> advantage of certain features (subfolders).

Isn't maildir format required to support imap clients?

Jay
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Jim Lawson | 1 Dec 2004 22:14
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1.0-test CVS HEAD index problems

Running current CVS HEAD I get:

dovecot: Dec 01 13:27:38 Info: Dovecot v1.0-test52 starting up
dovecot: Dec 01 13:33:34 Info: imap-login: Login: jtl [69.162.177.245]
dovecot: Dec 01 13:41:07 Error: IMAP(jtl): UIDVALIDITY changed 
(1100294646 -> 110192643
5) in mbox file /var/spool/mail/j/t/jtl
dovecot: Dec 01 13:41:07 Error: IMAP(jtl): UIDVALIDITY changed 
(1100294646 -> 110192643
5) in mbox file /var/spool/mail/j/t/jtl
dovecot: Dec 01 13:42:39 Info: imap-login: Login: jtl [69.x.x.x]
dovecot: Dec 01 13:42:39 Error: IMAP(jtl): UIDVALIDITY changed 
(1100294646 -> 110192643
5) in mbox file /var/spool/mail/j/t/jtl
dovecot: Dec 01 13:42:39 Error: IMAP(jtl): UIDVALIDITY changed 
(1100294646 -> 110192643
5) in mbox file /var/spool/mail/j/t/jtl
dovecot: Dec 01 13:43:59 Info: imap-login: Login: jtl [69.x.x.x]
dovecot: Dec 01 13:43:59 Error: IMAP(jtl): Corrupted index cache file 
/users/j/t/jtl/.i
map/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache: indexid changed
dovecot: Dec 01 13:47:24 Error: IMAP(jtl): file mbox-lock.c: line 493 
(mbox_lock): asse
rtion failed: (lock_type == F_RDLCK || ibox->mbox_lock_type != F_RDLCK)
dovecot: Dec 01 13:47:25 Error: child 17528 (imap) killed with signal 6
dovecot: Dec 01 13:47:41 Info: imap-login: Login: jtl [69.x.x.x]
dovecot: Dec 01 13:50:49 Error: IMAP(jtl): UIDVALIDITY changed 
(1101926435 -> 110192703
6) in mbox file /var/spool/mail/j/t/jtl
dovecot: Dec 01 13:55:27 Info: imap-login: Login: jtl [69.x.x.x]
(Continue reading)

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Tomi Hakala | 1 Dec 2004 22:43
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Re: 1.0-test CVS HEAD index problems

Jim Lawson wrote:
> Using Thunderbird-0.9.  Dovecot is running on RHEL 3, on top of 
> Redhat/Sistina GFS (clustered filesystem.)  Currently I'm keeping it on 
> one node to avoid possible GFS locking issues.

Your error messages are file system locking problems in any case,
what locking method are you using?

For me following locking config works fine with Polyserve clustered
file system, don't know about GFS though..

lock_method = flock
mbox_read_locks = flock
mbox_write_locks = flock

 > I've been following the -test code for a couple of months now, just to see how
 > it does, because we're running UW IMAPd and are excited to have a way to
 > increase the performance of our mail cluster (indexes) without having to move
 > away from mbox.

A small tip, put your indexes on separate LUN and preferably on
seperate disks than your mail spool, and since indexes are written
heavily non parity RAID like 1 or 10 is much better than RAID-5.

--

-- 
Tomi Hakala
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Jim Lawson | 1 Dec 2004 23:00
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Re: 1.0-test CVS HEAD index problems

Tomi Hakala wrote:

> Jim Lawson wrote:
>
>> Using Thunderbird-0.9.  Dovecot is running on RHEL 3, on top of 
>> Redhat/Sistina GFS (clustered filesystem.)  Currently I'm keeping it 
>> on one node to avoid possible GFS locking issues.
>
> Your error messages are file system locking problems in any case,
> what locking method are you using?
>
All of them appear locking-related, or just the assertion failure?

> For me following locking config works fine with Polyserve clustered
> file system, don't know about GFS though..
>
> lock_method = flock
> mbox_read_locks = flock
> mbox_write_locks = flock
>
Same configuration here.  We use flock with UW IMAPd (no dotlocks) and 
procmail, and it seems to work fine.  We could use fcntl, but it has 
more overhead.
Glad to meet someone using Polyserve.  Can you tell me more about your 
cluster?  Is it just for mail access?  How many nodes? How many users?

>
> A small tip, put your indexes on separate LUN and preferably on
> seperate disks than your mail spool, and since indexes are written
> heavily non parity RAID like 1 or 10 is much better than RAID-5.
(Continue reading)

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Tomi Hakala | 1 Dec 2004 23:13
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Re: 1.0-test CVS HEAD index problems

Jim Lawson wrote:
> All of them appear locking-related, or just the assertion failure?

My best guess is that all problems are result of locking problem.

> Same configuration here.  We use flock with UW IMAPd (no dotlocks) and 
> procmail, and it seems to work fine.

Maybe there is some issues with flock on GFS, have you tried dotlocking
with Dovecot?

> Glad to meet someone using Polyserve.  Can you tell me more about your 
> cluster?  Is it just for mail access?  How many nodes? How many users?

For now it's just a small lab setup with two RHEL 3 nodes, no real
users.

> All the mail is stored on RAID-10, mailboxes and indexes.  Splitting up 
> the spindles might help somewhat, but having them together shouldn't 
> cause problems like this, right?

No, it's just for a performance.

--

-- 
Tomi Hakala
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Jim Tittsler | 2 Dec 2004 00:46
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Re: Maildir/mbox on a per-user basis

On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 01:44:38PM -0600, J Moore wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 02:41:02PM -0500, the unit calling itself Jon Nathan wrote:
> 
> <re-structured for clarity>
> 
> > > Just out of curiosity, why would you want to use both formats for 
> > > storage?
> >
> > Some of the users have personal preferences.  We default to mbox,
> > but some people would rather use Maildir.  They take care of delivery
> 
> Isn't maildir format required to support imap clients?

No.

I think the mbox format is particularly well suited for
(mailing list) archives which are kept around in read-
mostly form.  They may also be a better fit for some
legacy mail clients that read mail directly on the
server.
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Keith Edmunds | 2 Dec 2004 09:17

Excessive imap_login processes

I'm running Dovecot on a very small mail server (never more than six users
accessing IMAP, often fewer). I'm seeing the number of imap_login processes
grow over time, and right now there are 23. All the "login_process_*"
settings in dovecot.conf are commented (ie, at their defaults). 

Is this a known or expected issue? The version of Dovecot is 0.99.10.8,
which I accept is perhaps a little old.

Thanks,
Keith
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seth vidal | 2 Dec 2004 09:23

Re: Excessive imap_login processes

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 08:17 +0000, Keith Edmunds wrote:
> I'm running Dovecot on a very small mail server (never more than six users
> accessing IMAP, often fewer). I'm seeing the number of imap_login processes
> grow over time, and right now there are 23. All the "login_process_*"
> settings in dovecot.conf are commented (ie, at their defaults). 
> 
> Is this a known or expected issue? The version of Dovecot is 0.99.10.8,
> which I accept is perhaps a little old.

Some mail clients will open multiple connections to monitor multiple
folders. Any mozilla users in your users?

-sv
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Timo Sirainen | 3 Dec 2004 04:37
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Re: 1.0-test CVS HEAD index problems

On 1.12.2004, at 23:14, Jim Lawson wrote:

> dovecot: Dec 01 13:41:07 Error: IMAP(jtl): UIDVALIDITY changed 
> (1100294646 -> 110192643
> 5) in mbox file /var/spool/mail/j/t/jtl
> dovecot: Dec 01 13:41:07 Error: IMAP(jtl): UIDVALIDITY changed 
> (1100294646 -> 110192643
> 5) in mbox file /var/spool/mail/j/t/jtl
..

If these were all done by same session it's a Dovecot problem because 
it doesn't notice that index is supposed to be rebuilt. I fixed this 
now in CVS.

> dovecot: Dec 01 13:47:24 Error: IMAP(jtl): file mbox-lock.c: line 493 
> (mbox_lock): asse
> rtion failed: (lock_type == F_RDLCK || ibox->mbox_lock_type != F_RDLCK)

There are at least two ways to make this happen. One is copying a mail 
into same mailbox, and the second one is something I haven't yet 
figured out. I don't see it happening often though.

> dovecot: Dec 01 13:50:49 Error: IMAP(jtl): UIDVALIDITY changed 
> (1101926435 -> 110192703
> 6) in mbox file /var/spool/mail/j/t/jtl

A bit strange that it keeps on doing that even with new sessions. 
Shouldn't happen unless for some reason it's not updating index files 
at all (or if reading doesn't notice the changes).
(Continue reading)

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Juerd | 2 Dec 2004 13:54
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pop3 with lmos results in multiple downloads

One of our users wants to use POP3 with leave-mail-on-server (LMOS).
That's great and works well for most people. But for some reason, they
MUA (outlook) downloads messages more than once. As the MUA asks for
messages, I'm sure it's Outlook's fault, but I was wondering if there is
anything that can be done about this on the servern side, or if anyone
knows how to fix Outlook.

I'm sending this here, because they report that with non-dovecot servers
it does work correctly.

They do not want IMAP, because they want to use Outlook, which cannot
support both Exchange and IMAP simultaneously.

This user has multiple accounts, and only for some of them things go
wrong. A temporary fix is to remove the mail from the server once, but
after a few more messages arrive, the problem starts all over again.

Please help.

Regards,

Juerd
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Gmane