Retrieving mail from read-only mdbox

Joseph Tam
Thu, 01 Jun 2017 01:05:25 -0000

> I've tried using IMAP with mail_location pointed at the snapshot, but,
> though I can get a listing of emails in the mailbox, the fetch fails when
> dovecot can't write-lock dovecot.index.log.

I've thought about doing this someday (adding snapshots to a user's
namespace) but never got around to doing it.  Snapshots get rotated
(e.g. hourly.1 -> hourly.2 -> etc.)  so every hour, so any indices
produced gets invalidated.  You would need to generate MEMORY indices
to create it on the fly.  Something like

 	namespace snapshots {
 		location = ...:INDEX==MEMORY
 		...
 	}

I'm not sure how dovecot would react when NetApp pulls the rug out
from under one of the hourly snapshots and replace it with the next
hour's version.

Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com>