dovecot - Jun 2011 - thunderbird not receiving new incoming mail: Timeout while waiting for lock for transaction log file

Hi there,

I am running dovecot 1.0.10 and thunderbird 3.1.10 for OSX 10.6.7
and I am finding that new imap mail is not coming into my INBOX folder 
on thunderbird.

there is an error message  "Timeout while waiting for lock for 
transaction log file" in the syslog

here is my INBOX .imap dir

~/mail/.imap/INBOX$ ls -l
total 75100K
-rw------- 1 blah blah  1462024 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index
-rw------- 1 blah blah 75153408 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index.cache
-rw------- 1 blah blah     1464 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index.log
-rw------- 1 blah blah   195812 Jun 11 17:23 dovecot.index.log.2

what is the best way to troubleshoot this problem?  what else can I look at?

Cheers,
Noah

On 6/11/2011 11:34 PM, Noah Garrett Wallach wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I am running dovecot 1.0.10 and thunderbird 3.1.10 for OSX 10.6.7
> and I am finding that new imap mail is not coming into my INBOX folder
> on thunderbird.
> 
> there is an error message  "Timeout while waiting for lock for
> transaction log file" in the syslog
> 
> here is my INBOX .imap dir
> 
> ~/mail/.imap/INBOX$ ls -l
> total 75100K
> -rw------- 1 blah blah  1462024 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index
> -rw------- 1 blah blah 75153408 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index.cache
> -rw------- 1 blah blah     1464 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index.log
> -rw------- 1 blah blah   195812 Jun 11 17:23 dovecot.index.log.2
> 
> what is the best way to troubleshoot this problem?
As always, use deductive reasoning.  If it was working fine, and
suddenly stopped working, something obviously changed.  Find what has
changed.

What does your MTA tell you about these messages that are not hitting
the inbox?  Is your MTA still delivering mail to Dovecot?

BTW, always post full error lines from your logs, not the partial junk
you inserted above.  We need to see the daemon and time stamp.  That
lock timeout could be generated by any number of deamons.  For
troubleshooting mail issues you'd typically look in your mail log, not
in syslog.

-- 
Stan

On 6/12/11 12:34 AM, Noah Garrett Wallach wrote:
> I am running dovecot 1.0.10 and thunderbird 3.1.10 for OSX 10.6.7
> and I am finding that new imap mail is not coming into my INBOX folder
> on thunderbird.
>
> there is an error message "Timeout while waiting for lock for
> transaction log file" in the syslog
>
> here is my INBOX .imap dir
>
> ~/mail/.imap/INBOX$ ls -l
> total 75100K
> -rw------- 1 blah blah 1462024 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index
> -rw------- 1 blah blah 75153408 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index.cache
> -rw------- 1 blah blah 1464 Jun 11 20:17 dovecot.index.log
> -rw------- 1 blah blah 195812 Jun 11 17:23 dovecot.index.log.2
>
> what is the best way to troubleshoot this problem? what else can I look at?
   Hey there Noah, long time no see!

   Here, if I'm not mistaken, one imap process is waiting for a lock on 
dovecot.index.log while another imap process already has it locked.

   Are your spools on an NFS-mounted filesystem?  That 
dovecot.index.cache file is gigantic; how big is the spool itself?  If 
it's big, and it's in mbox format, and the machine is swamped, that sync
could easily take long enough to cause another imap process to time out 
waiting for the lock.

   Man, can you imagine how awesome our mail servers would've been if we 
had Dovecot back in the Digex days in the mid-90s?  Oh, to have a time 
machine..

             -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL