Help!
I just noticed this error this morning, we have been getting a
lot of these in rc28 and rc29, not in rc27 or before:
Apr 6 07:22:52 karst dovecot: [ID 107833 mail.error] IMAP(jaearick): mbox file
/var/mail/j/jaearick was modified while we were syncing, check your locking
settings
Pine coughed up an internal error, no core dump, and dovecot
basically doubled the size of my mailbox by duplicating all of
my messages again. What changed with file locking between rc27
and rc28 to cause this? How to fix?
My setup: dovecot server is Solaris 10, with ZFS for home directories
(where index files go). The mail server is also Solaris 10, /var/mail
NFS mounted to the dovecot server (NFSv4, yes lockd is running). The
/var/mail filesystem on the mail server is also ZFS.
Here is the output of "dovecot -n":
# ./dovecot -n
# /opt/dovecot.1.0.rc29/etc/dovecot.conf
base_dir: /var/run/dovecot/
ssl_listen: *
ssl_cert_file: /opt/openssl/ssl/certs/colby0.cert
ssl_key_file: /opt/openssl/ssl/private/colby0.key.nopasswd
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot//login
login_executable: /opt/dovecot.1.0.rc29/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_process_per_connection: no
login_processes_count: 8
first_valid_uid: 100
first_valid_gid: 100
mail_location: mbox:%h/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%1u/%u:INDEX=%h
mail_drop_priv_before_exec: yes
auth default:
passdb:
driver: passwd-file
args: /etc/dovecot.deny
deny: yes
passdb:
driver: pam
userdb:
driver: passwd
Jeff Earickson
Colby College
On 6.4.2007, at 15.59, Jeff A. Earickson wrote:> Apr 6 07:22:52 karst dovecot: [ID 107833 mail.error] IMAP > (jaearick): mbox file /var/mail/j/jaearick was modified while we > were syncing, check your locking settings > > Pine coughed up an internal error, no core dump, and dovecot > basically doubled the size of my mailbox by duplicating all of > my messages again. What changed with file locking between rc27 and > rc28 to cause this? How to fix?I added this check to rc28. Hmm. I guess it's possible that the check doesn't work that great with NFS. But what do you mean duplicated the messages? Same messages exist multiple times in the mbox file? The only reason I can think of how that could happen is if you expunged a lot of data from the middle of the mbox, and then in the middle of the move that external modification check cancelled the sync. If that's not the case, maybe it really was something else than Dovecot that went and duplicated the messages? -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PGP.sig Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 186 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20070406/6b267b4e/attachment.bin>
On Fri, 6 Apr 2007, Timo Sirainen wrote:> Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 19:50:07 +0300 > From: Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> > Reply-To: Dovecot Mailing List <dovecot at dovecot.org> > To: Jeff A. Earickson <jaearick at colby.edu> > Cc: dovecot at dovecot.org > Subject: Re: [Dovecot] mbox sync/lock issue, rc28 and later > > On 6.4.2007, at 15.59, Jeff A. Earickson wrote: > >> Apr 6 07:22:52 karst dovecot: [ID 107833 mail.error] IMAP(jaearick): mbox >> file /var/mail/j/jaearick was modified while we were syncing, check your >> locking settings >> >> Pine coughed up an internal error, no core dump, and dovecot >> basically doubled the size of my mailbox by duplicating all of >> my messages again. What changed with file locking between rc27 and rc28 to >> cause this? How to fix? > > I added this check to rc28. Hmm. I guess it's possible that the check doesn't > work that great with NFS.I went back and read the wiki on mbox and locking to see what I might have done wrong, eg: http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/mbox. Procmail on my mail server (the LDA for sendmail there) uses dotlocking, fcntl, lockf for its lock setting -- this hasn't been changed in a looooong time.> > But what do you mean duplicated the messages? Same messages exist multiple > times in the mbox file? The only reason I can think of how that could happen > is if you expunged a lot of data from the middle of the mbox, and then in the > middle of the move that external modification check cancelled the sync.That seems to be what happened. I had marked a bunch of messages as deleted, and had done "expunge" in Pine to trash them. Then pine gave its internal error. Afterwords, most of the deleted messages were gone, some at the end were not (not marked as deleted), and about 20 messages in the middle of the mailbox were duplicated again at the end. I think a new message came in too. Except for the duplication and the undeletes, no messages were mangled. I just had to re-delete some messages. After this odd behavior, I went looking for a core file (none), and I checked my syslogs. That is when I found the pile of messages about "modified while syncing". I found this message 1161 times in my syslogs since March 28, 50 times today. Nobody has complained about anything though.> > If that's not the case, maybe it really was something else than Dovecot that > went and duplicated the messages? >I only read my email via an IMAP connection with Pine. Thats it. Jeff Earickson Colby College