dovecot - Sep 2020 - Leaked files in maildir "tmp" after vsz_limit crashes

Hi,

Lately I've seen a few examples of users hitting the vsz_limit (usually
trying to "delete" mails i Spam/Junk by moving them to Trash with a
large dovecot.index.cache  - which resulted in mails left/leaked in the
tmp directory of Trash.

Sometimes it seems the client gets into a state were it repeatedly tried
to sync the client and server state so it does it again and again,
building up the number of files/links in tmp.

It seems the default 1 week interval to "unlink_old_files()" is not
enough to prevent this from blowing up inode wise.

However, ... lowering it, - or increasing vsz_limit feels a bit like
kicking the can down the road.

PS: This on dovecot 2.2.36

/Peter

> On 30/09/2020 13:43 Peter Mogensen <apm at b-one.net> wrote:
> 
>  
> Hi,
> 
> Lately I've seen a few examples of users hitting the vsz_limit (usually
> trying to "delete" mails i Spam/Junk by moving them to Trash with
a
> large dovecot.index.cache  - which resulted in mails left/leaked in the
> tmp directory of Trash.
> 
> Sometimes it seems the client gets into a state were it repeatedly tried
> to sync the client and server state so it does it again and again,
> building up the number of files/links in tmp.
> 
> It seems the default 1 week interval to "unlink_old_files()" is
not
> enough to prevent this from blowing up inode wise.
> 
> However, ... lowering it, - or increasing vsz_limit feels a bit like
> kicking the can down the road.
> 
> PS: This on dovecot 2.2.36
> 
> /Peter
You need to set your vsz_limit to facilitate large index files. I would
recommend configuring it up to 2G.

Aki