Hi, I've just noticed something strange in dovecot 0.99.10.5. I created some IMAP folders from the command line (mkdir .INBOX.Folder1) as a different user to the owner of the mailbox. Obviously when I tried to view them via IMAP I got an error message, but the message to the client was "internal error[date time]" where date and time appeared to be the current date and time. Is this correct behaviour? Dovecot was running on FC2, and the client was Mozilla Thunderbird under Windows. Mark Lidstone IT and Network Support Administrator BMT SeaTech Ltd Grove House, Meridians Cross, 7 Ocean Way Ocean Village, Southampton. SO14 3TJ. UK Tel: +44 (0)23 8063 5122 Fax: +44 (0)23 8063 5144 E-Mail: mailto:mark.lidstone at bmtseatech.co.uk Website: www.bmtseatech.co.uk ========================================================================Confidentiality Notice and Disclaimer: The contents of this e-mail and any attachments are intended only for the use of the e-mail addressee(s) shown. If you are not that person, or one of those persons, you are not allowed to take any action based upon it or to copy it, forward, distribute or disclose the contents of it and you should please delete it from your system. BMT SeaTech Limited does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the context of this e-mail or its attachments which arise as a result of Internet transmission, nor accept liability for statements which are those of the author and not clearly made on behalf of BMT SeaTech Limited. =========================================================================
On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:26:44 +0100 "Mark Lidstone" <mlidstone at bmtseatech.co.uk> wrote:> I've just noticed something strange in dovecot 0.99.10.5. I created > some IMAP folders from the command line (mkdir .INBOX.Folder1)No: you created a directory. IMAP folders need cur/ tmp/ and new/ as subdirectories under the new folder directory. Keith -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Small business computer support: http://www.tiger-computing.co.uk Linux consultancy: http://www.TheLinuxConsultancy.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought that Dovecot was supposed to handle that kind of thing? Reading from the website: "Any kind of crash is considered as bug and will be fixed - even if it happens only by deliberately poking the index files." I've done it in the past by just creating the bare folders - they appear in the IMAP folder list then when they're used Dovecot seems to create the sub folders anyway. The issue I'm asking about here is, should the error message say "Internal Error [date time]" rather than something useful? Mark Lidstone IT and Network Support Administrator BMT SeaTech Ltd Grove House, Meridians Cross, 7 Ocean Way Ocean Village, Southampton. SO14 3TJ. UK Tel: +44 (0)23 8063 5122 Fax: +44 (0)23 8063 5144 E-Mail: mailto:mark.lidstone at bmtseatech.co.uk Website: www.bmtseatech.co.uk ========================================================================Confidentiality Notice and Disclaimer: The contents of this e-mail and any attachments are intended only for the use of the e-mail addressee(s) shown. If you are not that person, or one of those persons, you are not allowed to take any action based upon it or to copy it, forward, distribute or disclose the contents of it and you should please delete it from your system. BMT SeaTech Limited does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the context of this e-mail or its attachments which arise as a result of Internet transmission, nor accept liability for statements which are those of the author and not clearly made on behalf of BMT SeaTech Limited. ======================================================================== -----Original Message----- From: Keith Edmunds [mailto:keith at midnighthax.com] Sent: 20 August 2004 12:42 To: dovecot at dovecot.org Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Unusual behaviour On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:26:44 +0100 "Mark Lidstone" <mlidstone at bmtseatech.co.uk> wrote:> I've just noticed something strange in dovecot 0.99.10.5. I created > some IMAP folders from the command line (mkdir .INBOX.Folder1)No: you created a directory. IMAP folders need cur/ tmp/ and new/ as subdirectories under the new folder directory. Keith -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Small business computer support: http://www.tiger-computing.co.uk Linux consultancy: http://www.TheLinuxConsultancy.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, last try. Is it supposed to give the current time and date in the error message. I've no problem with it giving an "internal error" message to the client, but I am a little confused about the time being in there. That's all I'm asking about. Mark Lidstone IT and Network Support Administrator BMT SeaTech Ltd Grove House, Meridians Cross, 7 Ocean Way Ocean Village, Southampton. SO14 3TJ. UK Tel: +44 (0)23 8063 5122 Fax: +44 (0)23 8063 5144 E-Mail: mailto:mark.lidstone at bmtseatech.co.uk Website: www.bmtseatech.co.uk ========================================================================Confidentiality Notice and Disclaimer: The contents of this e-mail and any attachments are intended only for the use of the e-mail addressee(s) shown. If you are not that person, or one of those persons, you are not allowed to take any action based upon it or to copy it, forward, distribute or disclose the contents of it and you should please delete it from your system. BMT SeaTech Limited does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the context of this e-mail or its attachments which arise as a result of Internet transmission, nor accept liability for statements which are those of the author and not clearly made on behalf of BMT SeaTech Limited. ======================================================================== -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Boothman [mailto:andrew at mux.org.uk] Sent: 20 August 2004 18:09 To: Dovecot list Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Unusual behaviour Mark Lidstone wrote:> I thought that Dovecot was supposed to handle that kind of thing? > Reading from the website: > > "Any kind of crash is considered as bug and will be fixed - evenif> it happens only by deliberately poking the index files." > > I've done it in the past by just creating the bare folders - they > appear in the IMAP folder list then when they're used Dovecot seems to> create the sub folders anyway. > > The issue I'm asking about here is, should the error message say > "Internal Error [date time]" rather than something useful?Did Dovecot actually crash? Did it log a more sensible error message to syslog? I think Dovecot quite often reports an "internal error" to the client but then writes a more sensible error message to syslog. Which is probably no bad thing as you may well not want clients to see detailed error messages - there's nothing they can do about it anyway. Andrew
Ahh! Now you've explained it, it makes a lot of sense. Many thanks, Mark Lidstone IT and Network Support Administrator BMT SeaTech Ltd Grove House, Meridians Cross, 7 Ocean Way Ocean Village, Southampton. SO14 3TJ. UK Tel: +44 (0)23 8063 5122 Fax: +44 (0)23 8063 5144 E-Mail: mailto:mark.lidstone at bmtseatech.co.uk Website: www.bmtseatech.co.uk ========================================================================Confidentiality Notice and Disclaimer: The contents of this e-mail and any attachments are intended only for the use of the e-mail addressee(s) shown. If you are not that person, or one of those persons, you are not allowed to take any action based upon it or to copy it, forward, distribute or disclose the contents of it and you should please delete it from your system. BMT SeaTech Limited does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the context of this e-mail or its attachments which arise as a result of Internet transmission, nor accept liability for statements which are those of the author and not clearly made on behalf of BMT SeaTech Limited. ======================================================================== -----Original Message----- From: Timo Sirainen [mailto:tss at iki.fi] Sent: 23 August 2004 09:07 To: Mark Lidstone Cc: dovecot at dovecot.org Subject: RE: [Dovecot] Unusual behaviour On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 08:48 +0100, Mark Lidstone wrote:> Is it supposed to give the current time and date in the error message.> I've no problem with it giving an "internal error" message to the > client, but I am a little confused about the time being in there. > That's all I'm asking about.Client should never see any "real" error messages to make sure no extra information about the system gets leaked. So any time something unexpected happens, Dovecot gives the "internal error" message to user while writing the real error to log file. The timestamp is there to help sysadmin find the real error message from log files when user gives a copy&pasted internal error message. Instead of timestamp I guess there could be also some unique identifier which could be grepped from logs but I think timestamp is better. And about the original problem of giving "internal error" when Dovecot process didn't have access to some maildir.. Maybe it could have replied "Permission denied" to client in that case. It already does in several cases, but I guess the problem here was that it was trying to create the missing dirs but couldn't. I'll look over all these permission issues properly when creating real shared folder support.