dovecot - Jul 2003 - corrupt mbox, mailboxes not found, and message read status

I'm running dovecot 0.99.10-0.rc2 deb packages for Debian Woody from 
braincells.com.  My old environment was a server running UW-IMAP for 
IMAP and POP services.  We are still using mbox for all mailboxes.  I 
use IMP for web based access.

Forgive me if these issues have already been discussed or fixed in cvs. 
  Any additional pointers to this info. would be appreciated.

I have noticed a few issues.

----

I've seen a whole slew of entries like the following:

pop3(username): Error indexing mbox file /home/username/mail/inbox: LF 
not found where expected

According to this mailing list post from June 16, 2003:
http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/list/dovecot/2003-June/001668.html
it may be because of adjacent From mail headers in a message.

I've had one user that this was not the case.  They said they were 
deleting lots of messages in IMP and when he went back to his inbox, it 
was empty.  When I looked at the mbox file, a message had been 
truncated.  When I deleted the imap index and removed that truncated 
message, the mailbox became visible again.

Has the adjacent From issue been fixed?

Is there a way to find out more specifically what part of the mbox file 
dovecot is unhappy about?  ie. a line number.

----

Inside IMP several users have set up a filter to send messages marked 
as spam by SpamAssassin into a spam folder.  When they log-in or click 
the filter icon, the filter runs.  However, now when the the filter 
runs, it reports: "Problem with filter rule 1: folder does not exist: 
mail/spam".  However, the spam folder is still there, and when I open 
that folder in IMP, it opens just fine.  I've already changed IMP's 
folder prefix from 'mail/' to ''.  I've also tried deleting
the imap
index.  The message still shows up and the filter fails to run.

----

With the old set-up, when I check mail with a pop3 client, the UW pop 
server modifies the Status and/or X-Keywords headers for the message.  
When the mailbox is viewed with an IMAP client such as IMP, messages 
that have already been downloaded via pop are marked as read.  This 
doesn't seem to happen with dovecot.  I found a Oct 19 2003 thread
( http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/list/dovecot/2002-October/000774.html ) 
on the mailing list where Timo said he was intending to use the 
X-Keywords trick.  Did this ever get implemented?

----

Thanks,
-jared

On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 00:30, Jared wrote:
> pop3(username): Error indexing mbox file /home/username/mail/inbox: LF 
> not found where expected
> 
> I've had one user that this was not the case.  They said they were 
> deleting lots of messages in IMP and when he went back to his inbox, it 
> was empty.  When I looked at the mbox file, a message had been 
> truncated.  When I deleted the imap index and removed that truncated 
> message, the mailbox became visible again.
Hm. A truncated message shouldn't corrupt the whole mbox, at least if
you delete index file..

Of course the truncation itself isn't good either. Could it be because
you've set Dovecot to use different locking methods than your MTA? I
haven't noticed corruption myself yet and I use mboxes all the time.
Maybe I've been lucky though.

I'll probably also rewrite most of the mbox handling code in a few
months..
> Has the adjacent From issue been fixed?
Not yet, but it will be.
> Is there a way to find out more specifically what part of the mbox file 
> dovecot is unhappy about?  ie. a line number.
No. Hmm. Counting line numbers is a bit too kludgy to add, but exact
offset would be possible.
> Inside IMP several users have set up a filter to send messages marked 
> as spam by SpamAssassin into a spam folder.  When they log-in or click 
> the filter icon, the filter runs.  However, now when the the filter 
> runs, it reports: "Problem with filter rule 1: folder does not exist: 
> mail/spam".  However, the spam folder is still there, and when I open 
> that folder in IMP, it opens just fine.  I've already changed IMP's
> folder prefix from 'mail/' to ''.  I've also tried
deleting the imap
> index.  The message still shows up and the filter fails to run.
Looks like IMP still tries to use mail/ prefix for the filter. Does the
filter configuration have the mailbox set to mail/spam? Just guessing,
I've never used IMP.
> With the old set-up, when I check mail with a pop3 client, the UW pop 
> server modifies the Status and/or X-Keywords headers for the message.  
> When the mailbox is viewed with an IMAP client such as IMP, messages 
> that have already been downloaded via pop are marked as read.  This 
> doesn't seem to happen with dovecot.  I found a Oct 19 2003 thread
> ( http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/list/dovecot/2002-October/000774.html ) 
> on the mailing list where Timo said he was intending to use the 
> X-Keywords trick.  Did this ever get implemented?
X-Keywords have been used for a long time now. It's possible to set
\Seen flag for messages downloaded with POP3, but I don't know if it's
worth the trouble. Who uses POP3 and IMAP mixed anyway?

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Jared wrote:
> I'm running dovecot 0.99.10-0.rc2 deb packages for Debian Woody from
> braincells.com.
Yikes! That reminds me I never uploaded the backport of 0.99.10 final.
(It's been in sid for a long time.)  The packages are up there now.


-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at debian.org>
La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/