dovecot - Jul 2005 - dovecot pop3s delivers new messages as old (unread) messages ...

I just set up dovecot on fedora core 3 with only pop3s protocol
enabled.  On my client machine, I use fetchmail to get the mail and
then go through procmail and eventually ready by mutt.

Everything seems to work fine, except that all new emails are marked
old unread emails (i.e., marked with 'O' flag instead of 'N'). 
This
is annoying because some open source lists are so large that I really
rely on the "N" flag to read my emails.

I tested the same client setting with gmail and my isp (comcast) pop3
accounts.  They work fine - new mails are marked as "N".  This makes
me suspect dovecot is not set up correctly or something on the pop3
server machine is not right.

Anybody has an idea?

Thanks in advance.

Jun

Here are more detailed info:

-bash-3.00# rpm -qa | grep dovecot
dovecot-0.99.13-3.FC3

/etc/dovecot.conf:
----------------------------
protocols = pop3s
imap_listen = [::]
pop3_listen = [::]
imaps_listen = [::]
pop3s_listen = [::]
ssl_cert_file = /usr/share/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem
ssl_key_file = /usr/share/ssl/private/dovecot.pem
login_dir = /var/run/dovecot-login
login = imap
login = pop3
mbox_locks = fcntl
auth = default
auth_mechanisms = plain
auth_userdb = passwd
auth_passdb = pam
auth_user = root
auth_verbose = no

.fetchmailrc on client machine
--------------------------------------
poll mypop.server.com
        protocol pop3
        user "jsun"
        password "xxxx"
        is jsun here
        ssl

On 7/18/05, James Sun <jamjazzy at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I just set up dovecot on fedora core 3 with only pop3s protocol
> enabled.  On my client machine, I use fetchmail to get the mail and
> then go through procmail and eventually ready by mutt.
> 
> Everything seems to work fine, except that all new emails are marked
> old unread emails (i.e., marked with 'O' flag instead of
'N').  This
> is annoying because some open source lists are so large that I really
> rely on the "N" flag to read my emails.
> 
> I tested the same client setting with gmail and my isp (comcast) pop3
> accounts.  They work fine - new mails are marked as "N".  This
makes
> me suspect dovecot is not set up correctly or something on the pop3
> server machine is not right.
> 
> Anybody has an idea?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Jun
> 
> Here are more detailed info:
> 
> -bash-3.00# rpm -qa | grep dovecot
> dovecot-0.99.13-3.FC3
> 
> /etc/dovecot.conf:
> ----------------------------
> protocols = pop3s
> imap_listen = [::]
> pop3_listen = [::]
> imaps_listen = [::]
> pop3s_listen = [::]
> ssl_cert_file = /usr/share/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem
> ssl_key_file = /usr/share/ssl/private/dovecot.pem
> login_dir = /var/run/dovecot-login
> login = imap
> login = pop3
> mbox_locks = fcntl
> auth = default
> auth_mechanisms = plain
> auth_userdb = passwd
> auth_passdb = pam
> auth_user = root
> auth_verbose = no
> 
> .fetchmailrc on client machine
> --------------------------------------
> poll mypop.server.com
>        protocol pop3
>        user "jsun"
>        password "xxxx"
>        is jsun here
>        ssl
> 
OK I dug further and seeming got closer to the root of the problem.

I tried to fetchmail directly to bsmtp file (--bsmtp <filename>) and
found out that the mail already has "Status: O" line, apparently
injected by dovecot or by fetchmail.  Since I put "no rewrite" to
.fetchmailrc, it is very likely dovecot injected "Status: O" to the
mail instead of fetchmail.

Does anybody know if this is the *expected* behavior that dovecot
inject "Status: O" line to every mail it delivers?  Note in all my
tests the orginal mails are put under the regular
/var/spool/mail/<user> file.  I did not do any preprocessing etc.  I
verified that right before dovecot delivers these email, there is no
"Status: O" line in the mail file.

Thanks in advance.

Jun

On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 22:21 -0700, James Sun wrote:
> I just set up dovecot on fedora core 3 with only pop3s protocol
> enabled.  On my client machine, I use fetchmail to get the mail and
> then go through procmail and eventually ready by mutt.
> 
> Everything seems to work fine, except that all new emails are marked
> old unread emails (i.e., marked with 'O' flag instead of
'N').  This
> is annoying because some open source lists are so large that I really
> rely on the "N" flag to read my emails.
With 1.0-stable/test releases you can set "pop3_no_flag_updates = yes"
which fixes this. No way to fix 0.99.x though.

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On 7/22/05, Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 22:21 -0700, James Sun wrote:
> > I just set up dovecot on fedora core 3 with only pop3s protocol
> > enabled.  On my client machine, I use fetchmail to get the mail and
> > then go through procmail and eventually ready by mutt.
> >
> > Everything seems to work fine, except that all new emails are marked
> > old unread emails (i.e., marked with 'O' flag instead of
'N').  This
> > is annoying because some open source lists are so large that I really
> > rely on the "N" flag to read my emails.
> 
> With 1.0-stable/test releases you can set "pop3_no_flag_updates =
yes"
> which fixes this. No way to fix 0.99.x though.
> 
But why does 0.99 does a header rewrite before delivering the mails? 
It does not seem to be right behavior.  I wonder 1) if everybody else
seeing the same behavior 2) if not, what are the conditions triggering
this re-write?

I scanned through the source code and realized the *huge* difference
between .99 and 1.0.

I built 1.0.  When I ran it, it exited immediately,   Client cannot
connect to the server.  Is there anything I need to do in dovecot.conf
file.  Currently I just copied the sample conf and turned on the
protocols.  No other changes.

Another plead:  Anybody has built dovecot 1.0 for FC?  That would save
my struggle I am having right now.

Jun