dovecot - Oct 2006 - 1.0rc8: another problem? Possibly 64-bit index?

Yesterday I gave a status report about 10.rc8 in production, which
mentioned a problem about "Login process died too early..."

Timo suggested a patch for logging error messages.  I've applied this.

Others suggested increasing "login_max_processes_count".  That was
already
way above our likely maximum, but I've doubled it anyway.


Today, I've just repeated the trial, but with one significant difference
and one significant new problem.  The significant difference is that
today's machine is not a 32-bit i686 but a 64-bit (and faster) x86_64.

The new problem is lots of occurences of:

   [...]: IMAP([...]): file ../../../src/lib-index/mail-cache-transaction.c:
line 709 (mail_cache_add): assertion failed: (fixed_size == (unsigned int)-1 ||
fixed_size == data_size)
   [...]: child 4365 (imap) killed with signal 6

and:

   [...]: IMAP([...]): file ../../../../src/lib-storage/index/index-mail.c: line
105 (index_mail_get_fixed_field): assertion failed: (buffer_get_used_size(buf)
== data_size)
   [...]: child 15009 (imap) killed with signal 6


Naturally, I've backed off quickly.

Theoretically, this problem could be attributed to any of the three
changes: logging, max processes, different (64-bit) machine.

I suspect it's not the "login_max_processes_count" increase.

Is it a side-effect of the better logging? (That is, was it always
happening but the information simply not getting logged?)

Note that our index files (and mail spool (INBOX, folder) areas) are on an
NFS (NetApp) shared area accessed by all three classes of our machines:
 o  existing UW-IMAP (which doesn't use the indexes)
 o  yesterday-dovecot (32-bit)
 o  today-dovecot (64-bit)

My sneaky suspicion is that this is a subtle 64-bit-ism, either on its
own, or in some sort of interaction with an indexes created from
yesterday's 32-bit client.

(Yes, theoretically, I could try another test to attempt to confirm or
eliminate the 32/64 difference.  But these issues didn't show up under
testing, but only when we began trial service; I can't experiment on the
users!)


-- 

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
:  Senior Systems Programmer                Computer Centre       :
:                                           Durham University     :
:  http://www.dur.ac.uk/t.d.lee/            South Road            :
:                                           Durham DH1 3LE        :
:  Phone: +44 191 334 2752                  U.K.                  :

David Lee wrote:
> My sneaky suspicion is that this is a subtle 64-bit-ism, either on its
> own, or in some sort of interaction with an indexes created from
> yesterday's 32-bit client.
> 
> (Yes, theoretically, I could try another test to attempt to confirm or
> eliminate the 32/64 difference.  But these issues didn't show up under
> testing, but only when we began trial service; I can't experiment on
the
> users!)
> 
> 
When you move from 32-bit to 64-bit you need to rebuild the indexes
(known problem). See, for example
http://dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2006-October/016595.html

Best Wishes,
Chris

-- 
--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+-
Christopher Wakelin,                           c.d.wakelin at 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

On Thu, 2006-10-12 at 15:58 +0100, David Lee wrote:
>    [...]: IMAP([...]): file
../../../src/lib-index/mail-cache-transaction.c: line 709 (mail_cache_add):
assertion failed: (fixed_size == (unsigned int)-1 || fixed_size == data_size)
>    [...]: child 4365 (imap) killed with signal 6
Yep, this is a problem with dovecot.index.cache file created with 32bit
machine not working in 64bit machine. It should automatically detect
this and delete it, but for some reason it doesn't seem to work always.
You could do the exact same thing manually anyway by deleting them.

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