- dovecot - dovecot.org

[Dovecot] pop3-login process leakage
by Clive Jones 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

Hi, I've recently deployed dovecot on our servers, to replace courier-imapd. I'm delighted with its features and performance, but there's a major problem - it's leaking pop3-login processes. We have about 60 client machines, each collecting mail once every two minutes. In this configuration, the number of pop3-login processes increases by about ten an hour - apparently without bound. My workaround is to increase the open files rlimit, and the kernel overall limit on open files. This postpones disaster for long enough that killing and restarting dovecot nightly avoids problems. A possibly related problem is that about 1% of attempted POP3 logins fail. At the server, all I see is a syslog entry like this: Nov 3 22:17:21 greenwich pop3-login: Disconnected: Inactivity [10.76.30.246] At the client, there is a long (about 60-second) timeout. Then the client automatically retries, and generally succeeds. There are *not* exactly as many such disconnects as there are stray pop3-login processes - I counted roughly 230 inactivity disconnects in the time it took for 190 stray processes to accumulate. We are running dovecot 0.99.10 on OpenBSD 3.2 . The configuration is fairly normal, except that we are using a custom userdb and passdb (compiled as shared objects): auth_userdb = passwd8 auth_passdb = smb passwd8 is just userdb-passwd.c with a trivial tweak to truncate presented user names to eight characters. smb is an shim that delegates authentication to smbclient, to check passwords against NT domain controllers. I've placed the source code for these two modules in: http://www.nsict.org/~clive/misc/dovecot-2003-11-04/ ...along with my dovecot.conf, and a file that illustrates the growth in the number of pop3-login processes over time. So far as I'm aware, those modules are loaded by the dovecot-auth process, not the pop3-login processes, and are therefore unlikely to be the problem? The client machines are LAN-connected, and running a mixture of Outlook (2000/XP) and Outlook Express (5.5 and 6). There are also a couple of people using Mozilla. Most are collecting e-mail via POP3, a few via IMAP. This issue didn't show up under beta-test loading before I deployed dovecot. Since it seems only to be exhibited (or, at least, noticeably exhibited) under live load, it's very hard for me to diagnose things further without disrupting service. I'd be very grateful if anyone could suggest what might be wrong. Regards, --Clive.

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[Dovecot] Pid file?
by Clive Jones 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Is there a way to make Dovecot maintain a pid file? Most daemons put their pid in /var/run/dovecot.pid (or similar) while they are running, then remove it on exit, but I can't find any option to do this in Dovecot. (Of course, if I could work out how on earth to stop Dovecot leaking processes, I wouldn't be looking for a simpler way to keep bringing the daemon down and restarting it. (-8 ) Regards, --Clive.

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[Dovecot] Compiling dovecot on SuSE 9
by Ted S. Garaventa 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Again I am asking for some help to compile and configure dovecot on SuSE 9. I have configured and compiled it as per the instructions and no errors or problems. When I try to run dovecot from the command line it does not complain or give me any errors. The daemon starts and dies almost immediately. Do I need to compile differently? What can I do to see what is the problem. I was asked to run strace but I don't know what it is telling me. Thanks

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[Dovecot] Incompatibility with eudora
by Kadlecsik Jozsi 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Hello, We installed dovecot-0.99.10.2 on Monday and upgraded to dovecot-0.99.10.4 today, but our eudora users still are very unhappy: old undeleted mail messages are donwloaded every time they use our server. Looking into the source code, we found that dovecot knows about the following status flags: A: answered F: flagged (?) T: draft (?) R: seen (read) D: deleted However, it does not know and ignore the O flag. According to IETF (http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-palme-mailext-headers-08.txt) the following flags are valid (I know, it's a draft and not RFC): U: message is not downloaded and not deleted R: message is read or downloaded O: message is old but not deleted D: to be deleted N: new "Combinations of these characters can occur, such as "Status: OR" to indicate that a message is downloaded but not deleted." The old mails of our eudora users contain exactly this flag combination: Status: RO Could the compatibility problem somehow be fixed? Currently our system is pretty unusable for the users :-( Thank you and best regards, Jozsef -- E-mail : kadlec(a)sunserv.kfki.hu, kadlec(a)blackhole.kfki.hu PGP key: http://www.kfki.hu/~kadlec/pgp_public_key.txt Address: KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics H-1525 Budapest 114, POB. 49, Hungary

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[Fwd: Re: [Dovecot] Compiling dovecot on SuSE 9]
by Ted S. Garaventa 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Thanks for the reply regarding the compilaton of dovecot to SuSE 9. I have made the key and put it in the correct area but still no luck. I have attached the strace output to the end of this email. Thanks!!! > Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 00:17:07 -0800 (PST) > From: "Ted S. Garaventa" <tsg(a)cctg.com> > Subject: [Dovecot] Compiling dovecot on SuSE 9 > To: dovecot(a)procontrol.fi > > Again I am asking for some help to compile and configure dovecot on SuSE 9. im working on some rpm for it. i think ill release them on thursday. > I have configured and compiled it as per the instructions and no errors or problems. When I try to run dovecot from the command line it does not complain or give me any errors. The daemon starts and dies almost immediately. you did everything right so far. the problem is that dovecot comes with SSL enabled by default but there is no cert for it. go to $SRCDIR/doc/ edit mkcert.sh (change imapd.pem to dovecot.pem) run it. restart dovecot and everything will be fine. but you need a dovecot pam file. i use the file from [1]. > Do I need to compile differently? What can I do to see what is the problem. I was asked to run strace but I don't know what it is telling me. the solution would be: strace -e trace=file dovecot you would see a file not found error at the end of the log. darix [1] http://monsters.rsn.uni-rostock.de/~darix/suse/dovecot you can find the patch for mkcert.sh + dovecot.pam + init script there. and of course the rpm when it's done. -- irssi - the client of the smart and beautiful people http://www.irssi.de/ strace output follows: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- casella:/etc/ssl/private # strace -e trace=file /usr/local/sbin/dovecot execve("/usr/local/sbin/dovecot", ["/usr/local/sbin/dovecot"], [/* 55 vars */]) = 0 open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=86690, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/i686/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1461208, ...}) = 0 open("/usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=18087, ...}) = 0 pread(3, "## Dovecot 1.0 configuration fil"..., 2048, 0) = 2048 pread(3, "gfile instead of syslog(). /dev/"..., 2035, 2048) = 2035 pread(3, "k-bombing\n# we check only once i"..., 1978, 4083) = 1978 pread(3, "processes (ie. /var/mail will al"..., 2046, 6061) = 2046 pread(3, " which speeds up most operations"..., 2023, 8107) = 2023 pread(3, "s. There\'s no access checks othe"..., 2008, 10130) = 2008 pread(3, " and flock too; if you do the or"..., 2024, 12138) = 2024 pread(3, "modules = /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3\n"..., 2042, 14162) = 2042 pread(3, "e, see doc/dovecot-pgsql.conf\nau"..., 1883, 16204) = 1883 open("/etc/nsswitch.conf", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1291, ...}) = 0 open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=86690, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libnss_compat.so.2", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=33795, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libnsl.so.1", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=89220, ...}) = 0 open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=86690, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libnss_nis.so.2", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=40322, ...}) = 0 open("/lib/libnss_files.so.2", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=42162, ...}) = 0 open("/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1475, ...}) = 0 open("/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1475, ...}) = 0 access("/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login", X_OK) = 0 access("/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap", X_OK) = 0 lstat64("/usr/local/var/run/dovecot", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0700, st_size=72, ...}) = 0 open("/usr/local/var/run/dovecot", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0700, st_size=72, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/usr/local/var/run/dovecot", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0700, st_size=72, ...}) = 0 open(".", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3 open("/usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE|O_NOFOLLOW) = 4 open(".", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_LARGEFILE|O_DIRECTORY) = 5 fstat64(5, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0750, st_size=48, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0750, st_size=48, ...}) = 0 open("/usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0750, st_size=48, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0750, st_size=48, ...}) = 0 access("/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/dovecot-auth", X_OK) = 0 open("/dev/null", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3

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[Dovecot] a couple more tidbits on the conversion process
by Eric S. Johansson 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

a couple of things that really helped me when converting from mbox to maildir. First is to see how simple procmail changes could be. in your /etc/procmailrc file, just add the following. MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir/ # Make sure this directory exists! DEFAULT=$MAILDIR if you're using per user procmail files, the exact same two lines will also work to ensure proper delivery. if you're anything like me with 200 plus mailboxes, the following utility is really superb at doing the conversion all at once. Granted, I had to wait awhile to convert the GB+ of e-mail but I had other things to do and not getting interrupted every few minutes made the time reasonably productive. :-) http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/ I was getting an error about some sort of illegal character sequence but the mail seems to have converted fine. I think the next thing to do is create a new partition for home and make it ReiserFS. ---eric -- Speech recognition in use. Incorrect endings, words, and case is closer than it appears

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[Dovecot] did the conversion and something broke
by Eric S. Johansson 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

figures. Converted over to maildir today. Procmail is a piece of cake once I managed to pride out of its cold dead fingers the essential tiny bit of documentation I needed. But I'm having a problem with my nested directories. I have a directory called incoming sort my incoming mail. The conversion utility created a bunch of files called incoming.<stuff> and 1 file is visible incoming/pound. However, if I try to subscribe to anything else I get: the current command did not succeed. The mail server responded: Invalid mailbox name: incoming/ATMoB and this is how it set up. [esj@harvee Maildir]$ ls -ld .incomming.ATMoB/ drwx------ 5 esj esj 4096 Nov 25 13:45 .incomming.ATMoB/ [esj@harvee Maildir]$ ideas? ---eric -- Speech recognition in use. Incorrect endings, words, and case is closer than it appears

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[Dovecot] IMAP subscribe/unsubscribe broken in 0.99.10.2
by Matthew Reimer 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

IMAP subscribe/unsubscribe is broken in 0.99.10.2 (and earlier releases), specifically subsfile_set_subscribed(), where the logic is all wrong. I tried just copying over the latest subscription-file.c but it has dependencies on some file locking/dotlocking stuff that 0.99.10.2 doesn't have. Timo, would it be possible to incorporate the latest subscription-file.c into 0.99.10.3 (whenever that will be)? Matt

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[Dovecot] The latest dovecot fixes the problems with most mail clients
by Brook Humphrey 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

.99.10.4 fixes most the issues with kmail. For some reason if I look at an email and then go to another one and then try to go back to one I've already viewed sometimes it shows the mail as an atacment. This version does fix the problem with squrrelmail not being able to subscribe to folders. Thanks for the fixes. -- -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~- Brook Humphrey Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107 http://www.webmedic.net, bah(a)webmedic.net, bah(a)linux-mandrake.com Holiness unto the Lord -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-

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Re: [Dovecot] SSL and certificate authorities.
by Matthew Reimer 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

Zach Bagnall wrote: > On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 18:28:51 +0200, Timo Sirainen <tss(a)iki.fi> wrote: > >>What exactly does this patch do? Gives client a list of accepted CAs, >>but it doesn't look like it actually requires client to provide a >>valid certificate? > > > On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 11:03:08 +1300, James Tyson <james(a)giantrobot.co.nz> > wrote: > >>Also, is there a configuration directive for dovecot to add the >>issuers ca bundle similar to apache's SSLCACertificateFile? > > > I'm no SSL expert, but I took the requested feature to be a way to "make > additional certificates available in order to complete a certificate > chain". I had trouble with an instantssl cert, and found that what I needed to do was to also include all the certs up the chain in the .pem file, in a certain order, to keep the client from complaining about an invalid certificate. The first certificate in the pem file should be the the server certificate, followed by its chain starting from the root certificate down. Works for me without the need for patches (though something like SSLCACertificateFile would be nice). Matt

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