On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 06:22:45AM +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote: > On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 17:52 -0500, Steven F Siirila wrote: > > We are running Dovecot 1.0.0 using mbox format (currently in the midst > > of conversion from UW IMAP). We discovered today that the Dovecot LDA > > is accessing the user's INBOX at delivery time! > > Well, there are two things: > > 1) It always makes sure that the mbox file ends with "\n". I guess this > isn't all that important, but I'm not really interested in just removing > the code.
If that were the only reason for opening in read mode I'd lobby for this to be changed. :) > 2) If index files are fully synced, Dovecot writes X-UID: header. It > also updates nextuid field in X-IMAP: / X-IMAPbase: header of the first > message, which causes Dovecot to read() the file. The nextuid update > isn't really required, but I think some other bug shows up if it isn't > done. Do these operations apply to Deliver or just IMAP/POP? Not knowing enough about how the indexes work.... Question: Is it possible for Deliver to append a message w/o writing an X-UID header, leaving that operation to the IMAP/POP client code, and still maintain an updated index? If not, are there any options I can provide to Dovecot LDA to make it function without index file updating? > It would be possible to check the atime before any reading is done and > then later after message is saved it could be updated back. Hmm. Well, > attached a patch that seems to work. I'm not sure if I want to add it to > v1.0.1. Hmm. I wonder how much of a timing window is left; this could be a viable option for us. However, I would like to consider our future options for mailbox formats other than mbox (we will eventually migrate I'm sure). What we have is a daemon called "mailattrd" on our mail servers which runs on a TCP port and simply does a stat() on a user's mailbox and returns the atime, mtime, ctime values of said mailbox. That "service" is used by a variety of our applications. We were thinking of another possibility: changing Dovecot IMAP/POP to update the last access time (open in READ) of a specific file other than the user's INBOX. However, we'd rather not maintain local modifications unless absolutely necessary. Any thoughts on alternatives which might be mailbox-format-independent? Thanks Timo for your super and timely support -- it is greatly appreciated!! -- Steven F. Siirila Office: Lind Hall, Room 130B Internet Services E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Office of Information Technology Voice: (612) 626-0244 University of Minnesota Fax: (612) 626-7593
