On 16/5/2025 7:37 μ.μ., Kent Borg wrote:
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So both 2.3 and 2.4 look bad to me. I need a new IMAP server, and I don't know what it is.
Someone started writing an IMAP server in Rust a while back². The server is Stalwart, it /might/ be very good, but it seems to be a complete, all-sing all-dancing, do-everything solution. I can't drop Stalwart in as a new IMAP server, I would need to redo everything because Stalwart and its web GUI wants to do everything. (If I do do Stalwart, what if I discover it has its own problems? Stalwart isn't as new as 2.4, but the whole thing is pretty new.)
There are other Linux IMAP servers, but they all seem obscure in the face of Dovecot being the standard everyone uses. Except "everyone" doesn't use /e-mail/ that much anymore, and when they do use e-mail it is via something like Gmail and their web GUI. It feels like IMAP itself is getting pretty obscure.
Grrr.
-kb, the Kent who, in using replication, knows he is using an obscure feature of the (more and more) obscure Dovecot, implementing the (more and more) obscure protocol IMAP.
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Hi Kent,
Thanks for your really insightful philosophical AND technical review!
Your insight seems deep as you obviously are comfortable with source code analysis and development.
I am a simple admin setting things up (a poor man's mail server) and expecting them to run smoothly. Dovecot has been fine in our use case for many years as far as I can tell.
Now, I don't know if the issue I have faced has somehow been caused by a Dovecot bug or not; I would really appreciate if someone could point to some known bug (fixed or not) as a possible cause.
I am not looking to migrate away from Dovecot, but I would really like to be pointed to the right direction in isolating the cause of the issue. For example, could it be caused by storage performance issues which could cause high iowait? (We occasionally have such issues on our VPS server hosting the mail services.)
As I am preparing a new VPS server with -hopefully- better storage performance, I will migrate to 2.4 and see how it goes. Yet, our production environment is still on 2.3 and it will take some time to move to the new server.
Incidentally, the Stalwart project seems quite interesting, even if not so widely adopted or reviewed! If you have time to put it in a semi-production / sem-test environment, it might be worth the effort.
Best, Nick
On 16/5/2025 7:37 μ.μ., Kent Borg wrote: ...
So both 2.3 and 2.4 look bad to me. I need a new IMAP server, and I don't know what it is. Someone started writing an IMAP server in Rust a while back². The server is Stalwart, it might be very good, but it seems to be a complete, all-sing all- dancing, do-everything solution. I can't drop Stalwart in as a new IMAP server, I would need to redo everything because Stalwart and its web GUI wants to do everything. (If I do do Stalwart, what if I discover it has its own problems? Stalwart isn't as new as 2.4, but the whole thing is pretty new.) There are other Linux IMAP servers, but they all seem obscure in the face of Dovecot being the standard everyone uses. Except "everyone" doesn't use e-mail that much anymore, and when they do use e-mail it is via something like Gmail and their web GUI. It feels like IMAP itself is getting pretty obscure. Grrr. -kb, the Kent who, in using replication, knows he is using an obscure feature of the (more and more) obscure Dovecot, implementing the (more and more) obscure protocol IMAP. ... Hi Kent, Thanks for your really insightful philosophical AND technical review! Your insight seems deep as you obviously are comfortable with source code analysis and development. I am a simple admin setting things up (a poor man's mail server) and expecting them to run smoothly. Dovecot has been fine in our use case for many years as far as I can tell. Now, I don't know if the issue I have faced has somehow been caused by a Dovecot bug or not; I would really appreciate if someone could point to some known bug (fixed or not) as a possible cause. I am not looking to migrate away from Dovecot, but I would really like to be pointed to the right direction in isolating the cause of the issue. For example, could it be caused by storage performance issues which could cause high iowait? (We occasionally have such issues on our VPS server hosting the mail services.) As I am preparing a new VPS server with -hopefully- better storage performance, I will migrate to 2.4 and see how it goes. Yet, our production environment is still on 2.3 and it will take some time to move to the new server. Incidentally, the Stalwart project seems quite interesting, even if not so widely adopted or reviewed! If you have time to put it in a semi-production / sem-test environment, it might be worth the effort. Best, Nick