Joseph Tam wrote:> > > However, I often read and modify the mailboxes locally with mutt (e.g. > > append and delete mails). > > > > Should I expect any problems wit Dovecot indexes etc? What if I even > > do "rm ~/Mail/some/mailbox", will Dovecot be mad at me? > > I do it all the time. Works fine.Great, thank you!> > As others have written, you may see performance degradation as Dovecot > will have to rebuild indices, but if you have small mailboxes, this won't > be too bad. The only reason I use direct file access rather than IMAP > is that I'm too lazy to work out a passwordless access method. If this > doesn't bother you or you can configure this (e.g. Kerberos, keyring, > etc.), IMAP access is preferable since you won't pull the indices out > from Dovecot's feet.What passwordless access methods does Dovecot support? I'm more or less experienced with GSSAPI but for the present I would not like to set up a KDC somewhere on a box exposed to the Internet.> > You'll also get a lot of innocuous griping in the log files about > UIDVALIDITY and mailbox corruption, but they can be safely ignored.My mail goes through procmail, so Dovecot will not be the only one to touch the mboxes anyway. -- Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN 2:5005/49 at fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
I have my dovecot running with TLS, so the passwords are NOT transmitted in the clear (starttls). On Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 10:42 AM Victor Sudakov <vas at mpeks.tomsk.su> wrote:> Joseph Tam wrote: > > > > > However, I often read and modify the mailboxes locally with mutt (e.g. > > > append and delete mails). > > > > > > Should I expect any problems wit Dovecot indexes etc? What if I even > > > do "rm ~/Mail/some/mailbox", will Dovecot be mad at me? > > > > I do it all the time. Works fine. > > Great, thank you! > > > > > As others have written, you may see performance degradation as Dovecot > > will have to rebuild indices, but if you have small mailboxes, this won't > > be too bad. The only reason I use direct file access rather than IMAP > > is that I'm too lazy to work out a passwordless access method. If this > > doesn't bother you or you can configure this (e.g. Kerberos, keyring, > > etc.), IMAP access is preferable since you won't pull the indices out > > from Dovecot's feet. > > What passwordless access methods does Dovecot support? I'm more or > less experienced with GSSAPI but for the present I would not like to > set up a KDC somewhere on a box exposed to the Internet. > > > > > You'll also get a lot of innocuous griping in the log files about > > UIDVALIDITY and mailbox corruption, but they can be safely ignored. > > My mail goes through procmail, so Dovecot will not be the only one to > touch the mboxes anyway. > > -- > Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN > 2:5005/49 at fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/ >-- Larry Rosenman http://www.lerctr.org/~ler Phone: +1 214-642-9640 (c) E-Mail: larryrtx at gmail.com US Mail: 5708 Sabbia Dr, Round Rock, TX 78665-2106 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20180927/8f50b37b/attachment-0001.html>
Larry Rosenman wrote:> I have my dovecot running with TLS, so the passwords are NOT transmitted in > the clear (starttls).The problem is not transmitting them in the clear but keeping them in the clear in a local file like muttrc, or entering the password each time you launch mutt. -- Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN 2:5005/49 at fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
On Thu, 27 Sep 2018, Victor Sudakov wrote:>> As others have written, you may see performance degradation as Dovecot >> will have to rebuild indices, but if you have small mailboxes, this won't >> be too bad. The only reason I use direct file access rather than IMAP >> is that I'm too lazy to work out a passwordless access method. If this >> doesn't bother you or you can configure this (e.g. Kerberos, keyring, >> etc.), IMAP access is preferable since you won't pull the indices out >> from Dovecot's feet. > > What passwordless access methods does Dovecot support? I'm more or > less experienced with GSSAPI but for the present I would not like to > set up a KDC somewhere on a box exposed to the Internet.Yes, Kerberos is one way. Or some password broker as Larry has done but the client has to be able to work with it. You can also pipe to imap worker process via ssh/pubkey if your server will allow it. Perhaps dovecot supports SSL client certificate authentication as well -- I haven't invested a lot of time looking into the various schemes. Whether you use any of them is up to you. As I said, direct mailbox file access will work. However, if you deal with Gb size mailboxes, re-indexing and general mail operations will be painful.> My mail goes through procmail, so Dovecot will not be the only one to > touch the mboxes anyway.Not a deterrent: replace all mailbox recipies with a pipe to dovecot's LDA :0 ... pattern ... | /path/to/dovecot-lda -d {user} -m {mailbox} ... # End of file: deliver to inbox :0 w | /path/to/dovecot-lda -d {user} Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com>
Joseph Tam wrote: [dd]> > Whether you use any of them is up to you. As I said, direct mailbox > file access will work. However, if you deal with Gb size mailboxes, > re-indexing and general mail operations will be painful. > > > My mail goes through procmail, so Dovecot will not be the only one to > > touch the mboxes anyway. > > Not a deterrent: replace all mailbox recipies with a pipe to dovecot's LDA > > :0 ... pattern ... > | /path/to/dovecot-lda -d {user} -m {mailbox} > > ... > > # End of file: deliver to inbox > :0 w > | /path/to/dovecot-lda -d {user} >This will clutter up ~/.procmailrc, but may be I'll try someday. Now I have encountered a different problem. My Android IMAP client (the Gmail map) shows lots of mails in my Inbox. However, I already deleted those mails locally from /var/mai/vas. They are being cached somewhere. Is it not dovecot caching them? Nor can I find a way to forcefully rescan an IMAP folder in the Gmail app. -- Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN 2:5005/49 at fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
Joseph Tam wrote: [dd]> > Whether you use any of them is up to you. As I said, direct mailbox > file access will work. However, if you deal with Gb size mailboxes, > re-indexing and general mail operations will be painful. > > > My mail goes through procmail, so Dovecot will not be the only one to > > touch the mboxes anyway. > > Not a deterrent: replace all mailbox recipies with a pipe to dovecot's LDA > > :0 ... pattern ... > | /path/to/dovecot-lda -d {user} -m {mailbox} > > ... > > # End of file: deliver to inbox > :0 w > | /path/to/dovecot-lda -d {user} >This will clutter up ~/.procmailrc, but may be I'll try someday. Now I have encountered a different problem. My Android IMAP client (the Gmail map) shows lots of mails in my Inbox. However, I already deleted those mails locally from /var/mai/vas. They are being cached somewhere. Is it not dovecot caching them? Nor can I find a way to forcefully rescan an IMAP folder in the Gmail app. -- Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN 2:5005/49 at fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/