- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] dovecot stopping - no messages
by Nigel Allen 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Greetings Running Fedora Core 3 and dovecot-0.99.13-3.FC3 as a production mail server for around 30+ accounts. A couple of times a day dovecot just stops. Nothing in the mail log except for Apr 26 00:48:19 sydsrv05 imap-login: Can't connect to auth process at default: Connection refused It's got to the point that I have put a script into cron.hourly to restart the dovecot service every hour. Any suggestions where to start looking please? Rgds Nigel -- Nigel Allen, Snr Consultant, ProSmart Consulting Australia 48 Tiarri Avenue, Terrey Hills, NSW 2084, Australia Tel: +61 2 9450 2690 Fax: +61 2 9450 2691 Mob: +61 4 1494 5269 http://www.prosmart.com.au

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Re: [Dovecot] docecot and procmail?
by Todd Burroughs 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Dan Stromberg wrote: > Is dovecot still considered unreliable when combined with NFS? I've been using the test releases and lately the current CVS release over NFS. We're using procmail to deliver mail and dovecot as the imap server. Imap access is sometimes through UW-imap on the same mailboxes. We keep the index files on the NFS server and are using mbox format. I am only running this on one server at this point, so you could see other problems if it is run on multiple servers. Procmail is run on several servers. We're probably testing around 50 mailboxes, some quite large. I haven't seen any corruption of the mboxes and some of them get hit pretty hard. >From my experience, I wouldn't call it "unreliable". I have this setting in the config: mmap_disable = yes I haven't tried using mmap yet... The server is Linux, kernel 2.6.x and the NFS server is a NetApp. Make sure that NFS locking is working. Todd

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[Dovecot] Problem with users home...
by websafe 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Hi :) I hope this short example shows what problem I have: # returns users homedir from /etc/passwd grep user1 /etc/passwd | cut -d':' -f6 # result: /home/group-subdir/user1 And the logfile... #maillog imap-login: Login: user1 [192.168.0.253] imap(user1): mkdir(/home/user1/Maildir/.Trash) failed: No such file or directory Why Dovecot tries to create /home/user1/Maildir/.Trash and NOT /home/group-subdir/user1/Maildir/.Trash as in /etc/passwd ??? Is there any solution? I'm running 0.99.14 # cat /etc/dovecot.conf ssl_disable = yes disable_plaintext_auth = no login = imap verbose_proctitle = yes default_mail_env = maildir:/home/%u/Maildir auth = default auth_mechanisms = plain auth_userdb = passwd /etc/passwd auth_passdb = shadow /etc/shadow auth_user = root Thanks in advance, -- websafe

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[Dovecot] Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 and Dovecot/IMAP problem.
by websafe 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

If you notice problems with your imap folders and "Lost transaction logfile" when connecting Dovecot (0.99 / 1.0-testXX) via IMAP, upgrade to Thunderbird 1.02. This should help. -- websafe

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[Dovecot] Track when user last checked mail
by Del Stoliker 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

First off I've just got to say thanks. We just upgraded from UW to Dovecot migrating from mbox to maildir. Wow, what a difference! Load average used to hang around 5.0 during business hours and could get up to 20+ on a bad day. Now we rarely break 1.0! I'm wondering if there's a way to keep track of the last time a user checked their email and whether they checked it using POP or IMAP. We're trying to gather statistics on what protocols our users use and find accounts that haven't been checked for a long time. We used to be able to do some of this with the finger command and the user's mbox. I found a script called "mfinger" that works better with Maildir, but it's designed for Courier. Any ideas? Thanks!

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[Dovecot] docecot and procmail?
by Dan Stromberg 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Is dovecot still considered unreliable when combined with NFS? Is this true for mbox only, or Maildir as well? If dovecot Is still considered unreliable with NFS, how about having a dovecot mode that would chain into procmail for delivery, so that dovecot doesn't (necessarily) have to reinvent that wheel? Thanks!

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[Dovecot] Why is "UIDVALIDITY changed" fatal?
by Chris Wakelin 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

I've got several users testing Dovecot IMAP at the moment, but some of them are also accessing their mail via UW-IMAP at other times. (I've warned them about accessing the same folder simultaneously via UW-IMAP and Dovecot!) In addition, we have special folders "AutoSpam" and "Trash" that pruned using Washington's "mailutil" automatically every so often. Of course, Dovecot's indexes will become invalid in such cases, but they seem to get rebuilt automatically OK. However, in some cases UW-IMAP seems to change the UIDVALIDITY value (not sure why!) and when Dovecot tries to sync it notices this and gives up with a fatal error on opening that folder. Opening the folder a second time is then OK. I was wondering why Dovecot can't just rebuild the indexes silently in such cases (which seems to be done by returning "0" from the mbox_sync_loop() routine)? Best Wishes, Chris --+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+-- Christopher Wakelin, c.d.wakelin(a)reading.ac.uk IT Services Centre, The University of Reading, Tel: +44 (0)118 378 8439 Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK Fax: +44 (0)118 975 3094

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[Dovecot] Basic configuration problem "not a directory"
by Einar Flesaker 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

Hi, I've been struggling with getting dovecot up and running the last hour, but I seem to be stuck. When logging in (which I can do successfully) my connection is dropped, and the following is outputted to my dovecot log: dovecot: Apr 26 09:56:52 Fatal: chdir(/bin/false) failed with uid 513: Not a directory dovecot: Apr 26 09:56:52 Error: child 27345 (imap) returned error 89 .. But I'm certain the relevant directories exist. Relevant configuration details are as follows: * [dovecot.conf] valid_chroot_dirs = /var/spool/vmail default_mail_env = maildir:/var/spool/vmail/$d/%n/ * [passwd sample] einar@domain.com::513:513:/var/spool/vmail/domain.com/:/bin/false:: * [directory listing] [root@server einar]# pwd /var/spool/vmail/domain.com/einar [root@server einar]# ls -l totalt 12 drwx------ 2 virtmail virtmail 4096 apr 26 07:27 cur drwx------ 2 virtmail virtmail 4096 apr 26 08:48 new drwx------ 2 virtmail virtmail 4096 apr 26 08:48 tmp I'd be very grateful for any assistance, any ideas of what might be wrong. Is there any easy way to see the relevant directory that /bin/false exits on? -Einar-

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[Dovecot] many instances om imap and imap-login
by Jon 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

Hi, Im using dovecote as my IMAP interface. However i do have a lot of imap instances. its only 7 user using the system as i get this. please advice. 1230 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1309 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1387 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1388 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1389 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1390 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1391 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1399 ? S 0:00 imap 1400 ? S 0:00 imap 1401 ? S 0:00 imap 1402 ? S 0:00 imap 1406 ? S 0:00 imap 1442 ? S 0:00 imap 1636 ? S 0:00 imap 1637 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1638 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1640 ? S 0:00 imap 1683 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1684 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1685 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1686 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1687 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1689 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1692 ? S 0:00 imap 1693 ? S 0:00 imap 1697 ? S 0:00 imap 1698 ? S 0:00 imap 1699 ? S 0:00 imap 1701 ? S 0:00 imap 1914 ? S 0:00 imap 1916 ? S 0:00 imap 1965 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1968 ? S 0:00 imap 1969 ? S 0:00 imap 1971 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1974 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1980 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1981 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2068 ? S 0:00 imap 2069 ? S 0:00 imap 2071 ? S 0:00 imap 2072 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2079 ? S 0:00 imap 2157 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2158 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2159 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2160 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2161 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2162 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2332 ? S 0:00 imap 2337 ? S 0:00 imap 2338 ? S 0:00 imap 2339 ? S 0:00 imap 2340 ? S 0:00 imap 2341 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2342 ? S 0:00 imap-login 2386 ? S 0:00 imap 2387 ? S 0:00 imap-login 3095 ? S 0:00 imap 3096 ? S 0:00 imap-login /jon

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Re: [Dovecot] many instances om imap and imap-login
by Dominic Marks 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

On Tuesday 26 April 2005 15:19, you wrote: > Thanks for extensive answer. > > I will look into all your suggestions. Please keep the mailing list in the response, it allows other people to provide advice, follow the conversation, and you get, hopefully, complete solutions stored in the archives waiting for Google to index. > Answers to you questions: > > Are the mailboxes being accessed via Webmail?: > yes they can but arent at the moment (squirrelmail) Webmail can cause lots of extra connections to me made. > What Mail application are your users using?: > Thunderbird 1.0.2 Don't have much experience with this client, although it works when I've tried it. Others may be able to provide experience here. > Have you checked what state the connections are in?: > Do you mean of they are connected or not? when I run top I do see > instances called IMAP owned by each user so I asume they are connected mail# netstat -f inet -p tcp | grep imap tcp4 0 0 mailserver.imap client01.1386 ESTABLISHED tcp4 0 0 mailserver.imap client02.1344 ESTABLISHED tcp4 0 0 mailserver.imap client01.1108 ESTABLISHED tcp4 0 0 mailserver.imap client03.54607 ESTABLISHED mail# netstat -a -f inet -p tcp | grep "*.imap*" tcp4 0 0 *.imaps *.* LISTEN tcp4 0 0 *.imap *.* LISTEN FreeBSD 5.4 with a few Outlook and KMail clients. > /jon > > Dominic Marks said the following on 2005-04-26 16:11: > >On Tuesday 26 April 2005 14:58, Jon wrote: > >>Hi, > >> > >>Im using dovecote as my IMAP interface. However i do have a lot of imap > >>instances. its only 7 user using the system as i get this. please advice. > > > >Having lots of processes running isn't automatically a bad thing, but you > > do > > > >seem to have quite a lot of imap and imap-login processes, so: > >>From a dovecot.conf on a server I run being used by about 7 people: > > > > (Comments are from dovecot-sample.conf) > > > ># Should each login be processed in it's own process (yes), or should one > ># login process be allowed to process multiple connections (no)? Yes is > > more # secure, espcially with SSL/TLS enabled. No is faster since there's > > no need # to create processes all the time. > >login_process_per_connection = no > > > >So if security is less of a concern than having many processes running, > > you should set this to no. > > > ># Number of login processes to create. If login_process_per_user is > ># yes, this is the number of extra processes waiting for users to log in. > >login_processes_count = 1 > > > >I set this low because I don't need the extra processes. > > > ># Maximum number of extra login processes to create. The extra process > > count # usually stays at login_processes_count, but when multiple users > > start # logging in at the same time more extra processes are created. To > > prevent # fork-bombing we check only once in a second if new processes > > should be # created - if all of them are used at the time, we double > > their amount until # limit set by this setting is reached. This setting > > is used only if # login_process_per_use is yes. > >#login_max_processes_count = 128 > > > >You might want to set this to something like 4? > > > ># Maximum number of connections allowed in login state. When this limit is > ># reached, the oldest connections are dropped. If login_process_per_user > ># is no, this is a per-process value, so the absolute maximum number of > > users # logging in actually login_processes_count * max_logging_users. > >#login_max_logging_users = 256 > > > >Probably no need to worry about this. > > > >>1230 ? S 0:00 imap-login > >> 1309 ? S 0:00 imap-login > > > > <snip> > > > >> 2387 ? S 0:00 imap-login 3095 ? S 0:00 imap > >> 3096 ? S 0:00 imap-login > >> > >>/jon > > > >Other things to think about: > > > >Are the mailboxes being accessed via Webmail? > >What Mail application are your users using? > >Have you checked what state the connections are in? > > > >HTH, -- Dominic GoodforBusiness.co.uk I.T. Services for SMEs in the UK.

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