dovecot - Oct 2006 - File isn't in mbox format: /home/foo/mail/Trash

Hello,

I'm seeing the following error on a server:

 File isn't in mbox format: /home/foo/mail/Trash

The Trash file is full of the following at the beginning:

^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^

I've repaired the file several times, but this keeps happening. Would 
any of you mind offering me some insight into what could be causing this 
and how to fix it?

Below is some information about the system:

[root at server1 mail]# uname -a
Linux server1.example.com 2.6.9-42.0.2.EL #1 Thu Aug 17 17:36:53 EDT 
2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
[root at server1 mail]# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 4)
[root at server1 mail]# rpm -qa|grep -i dovecot
dovecot-0.99.11-4.EL4
[root at sever1 mail]# rpm -qa|grep -i sendmail
sendmail-cf-8.13.1-3.RHEL4.5
sendmail-8.13.1-3.RHEL4.5

Here's everything that isn't a comment or blank line in dovecot.conf:

[root at server1 mail]# grep -v ^# /etc/dovecot.conf|grep -v ^$
protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s
imap_listen = [::]
pop3_listen = [::]
login_dir = /var/run/dovecot-login
login = imap
login = pop3
mbox_locks = flock
auth = default
auth_mechanisms = plain
auth_userdb = passwd
auth_passdb = pam
auth_user = root

Any advice would be appreciated.

Best Regards,

James Lupolt

On Mon, 2006-10-16 at 05:40 -0500, James Lupolt wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm seeing the following error on a server:
> 
>  File isn't in mbox format: /home/foo/mail/Trash
> 
> The Trash file is full of the following at the beginning:
> 
> ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^
> 
> I've repaired the file several times, but this keeps happening. Would 
> any of you mind offering me some insight into what could be causing this 
> and how to fix it?
This is a known problem with v0.99.x. The mbox code has been rewritten
in 1.0rc versions and it doesn't have this problem, so I'd just suggest
upgrading.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL:
<http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20061016/4e13f59d/attachment.bin>

> On Mon, 2006-10-16 at 05:40 -0500, James Lupolt wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> > 
>> > I'm seeing the following error on a server:
>> > 
>> >  File isn't in mbox format: /home/foo/mail/Trash
>> > 
>> > The Trash file is full of the following at the beginning:
>> > 
>> > ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^
>> > 
>> > I've repaired the file several times, but this keeps
happening. Would
>> > any of you mind offering me some insight into what could be
causing this
>> > and how to fix it?
>>   
>
> This is a known problem with v0.99.x. The mbox code has been rewritten
> in 1.0rc versions and it doesn't have this problem, so I'd just
suggest
> upgrading.
We had a problem with this several months ago.  The alarming aspect of 
the corruption is when it occurs at the beginning of an email (i.e. 
^@^@^@From:...).  Emails can be lost/appended to the bottom of the 
previous email.

I've seen this problem several times on our deployment and tracked it 
down to what appears to be NFS locking issues.  Are you storing mails on 
an NFS mounted filesystem? If so check the following...
http://wiki.dovecot.org/NFS

We're running dovecot-1.0 beta5 (admittedly not an rc version but >beta4 
which is mentioned in the NFS wiki section) so I'm not sure the mbox 
rewrite from v0.99.x has fixed the problem.

We had several applications accessing the mbox (Dovecot and Pine 
mainly).  Reconfiguring Pine to use IMAP (using Dovecot) rather than 
write to the mbox directly appears to have fixed the problem and we have 
had no corruption for several months now.

So, my question is am I wrong to assume NFS locking/corruption? Does 
anyone know if this is really a Dovecot or NFS issue?

Phil
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20061017/01676a40/attachment-0002.html>