Subject: imapd and Solaris 2.2

From: Laurie Cuthbert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1993 15:12:07 +0000 (GMT)

We have had imapd running under Solaris 2.2 for some time (the imapd that 
was bundled with 3.88 and now 3.89) and it seemed OK. However, a couple 
of "funnies" have now surfaced and I wonder if anyone else has 
experienced them.

The Solaris 2 machine is a server for student mail in the department. 
Most students use either ECS or pine as an MUA. In each case they were
saving mail to local folders. 
               ^^^^^ 

However, in order to improve access for students to mail, we reached an
agreement with our central Computing Services (CSS) that they would run
pc-pine on some of the open-access PC clusters. When we tried this out, we
decided to allow mail to be saved to remote folders using imap and this
was when the problem showed up. 

The problem is: a listing of remote folders removes the first 3 
characters of the folder name, except INBOX which it handles quite happily.

At first we thought it was the way CSS had set up the PCs (they are 
obsessed with Novell and have tcp/ip over Novell) but it turns out that 
this is not the case - it appears to be the imapd on the Solaris 2 machine.

Below is the folder listing obtained with using pine 3.89 on that machine 
with the folder collection given as:

folder-collections={gryphon.elec.qmw.ac.uk}mail/[]

INBOX               mail/               nt-mail

The entry "nt-mail" should be "sent-mail". It was created automatically 
by pine and appears correct in a directory listing:

gryphon{testuser}75: ls
Mail@  mail/
gryphon{testuser}76: cd mail
/users/test/testuser/mail
gryphon{testuser}77: ls
sent-mail

The outgoing message was written to the sent-mail file.

I also do not understand why the folder listing shows the entry mail/

The other (more minor) problem is that the rimapd protocol does not seem 
to work either - we always get asked for a password. This is less of a 
problem since most users access that server from PCs so need to log in 
anyway.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Regards

Laurie Cuthbert

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1993 12:21:36 -0800 (PST)

Hello Laurie -

     Re: remote folder name decapitation problem:

     Did you try rebuilding imapd?  There is a problem in the interpretation
of directory entries depending upon whether you use struct direct or struct
dirent.  It gets worse; apparently binaries that run on one Solaris machine
don't necessarily run on another!

     Recommendation: try rebuilding the imapd binary.  If you still see the
problem, try rebuilding the imapd binary from the IMAP toolkit mail/imap.tar.Z
on ftp.cac.washington.edu and use that instead of the Pine-bundled version.
We don't believe there are any changes between the (slightly newer) IMAP
toolkit version and the Pine-bundled version that would explain the problem,
but in each case I've seen to date, rebuilding does the trick.

     Re: rimapd access not working:

     Try ``rsh server /etc/rimapd'' from the client and see if that gets you
into a pre-authenticated IMAP server.  You should get text starting with the
string ``* PREAUTH'' (use ``. LOGOUT'' to get out).  If you get an error
message, figure out what causes that error message and that'll probably fix
the problem.

     Happy new year.

-- Mark --

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From: Laurie Cuthbert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1993 13:57:16 +0000 (GMT)

Hi Mark

> don't necessarily run on another!

I believe that with Solaris 2!! - it is _not_ my favourite operating system!
> but in each case I've seen to date, rebuilding does the trick.

I had already tried rebuilding the 3.89 bundled version. I've now tried 
the IMAP toolkit one and also (as a last resort) using the solaris binary 
available at UW  - all have exactly the same effect, except that the 
rimap problem has disappeared.
 
Sorry to spoil your record about rebuilding curing the problem  :-)

If nobody else has seen anything similar, we will start to have a 
detailed look at what might be happening.

regards and Happy New Year to you too.

Laurie

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1993 11:45:23 -0800 (PST)

Can you give me access to your Solaris system?  I'd like to take a look.