Subject: dmail maximum mailbox size

From: "Bob Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 13:16:12 -0700

dmail seems to stop working properly when my mailbox size hits 50MB. i have 
procmail configured to use dmail to deliver to my inbox, when the mailbox 
hits 50MB it stops growing which corrupts the mailbox. once the mailbox is 
full dmail delivers to temp files in the same directory as the mailbox.

i am currently using dmail from the imap-2002e distribution. i have seen 
this behavior from imap-2001a dist as well. my host platform is solaris 8 
SPARC.

any help would be appreciated.

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From: "Nick Hodulik" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 13:29:47 -0700

I have been using dmail on various flavors of Linux for several years now
and have never gotten this problem. I HAVE had this problem when delivering
into mbox format-- at more than 50MB it just doesn't work. The problem in
fact created the need to switch to dmail and mbx in the first place.

Speaking of which, I have always wondered why mbx isn't the default format
for mail delivery "out of the tarball" and instead have mbox need to be
manually switched on instead of vice versa. Every time a new version of
UW-IMAP come out I have to delve into the code and manually switch
everything to mbx. The UW docs do everything but state that mbx is the
uber-format for mail and that mbox sucks, which is the truth. Why not lead
the charge here?

n

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 13:33:26 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

> full dmail delivers to temp files in the same directory as the mailbox.

There is no 50MB limit in dmail; however, dmail does collect the incoming
message to a tmpfile(), which is typically (depends upon your C library)
written to /tmp, /usr/tmp, or /var/tmp.

If dmail is unable to write the entire message to the tmpfile(), it
returns EX_TEMPFAIL to the calling program.

Only after successfully collecting the entire incoming message into the
tmpfile() will dmail even start to deliver the message to the mailbox.
Mail delivery is atomic with no partial delivery; it either completes in
entirely or fails entirely.

There is no mechanism in dmail to "deliver to temp files in the same
directory as the mailbox."  At least, there is not in the distribution
version.  If you are using a third-party patched version, e.g. one with a
maildir format driver, that may be a different story.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 13:42:32 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Nick Hodulik wrote:
> I HAVE had this problem when delivering
> into mbox format-- at more than 50MB it just doesn't work.

This is the first that I have ever heard about such a problem.  Note that
the traditional UNIX format append procedure also needs to write to a
tmpfile().  This is because the traditional UNIX format has a 5 minute
timeout on the write-lock.  If multiple messages are being appended in the
same operation, the entire sequence can take more than 5 minutes, causing
the lock to be lost.  By collecting the entire multi-message append first,
the traditional UNIX format append procedure can minimize the period that
it has the lock.

Thus, when going through dmail you need 150MB of free disk space to
deliver a 50MB message to a traditional UNIX format mailbox.

I will leave aside the fundamental issue that it is insane to use
traditional UNIX format mailboxes for 50MB messages.

> manually switched on instead of vice versa.

For better or worse, traditional UNIX format is the default format for
mailboxes on UNIX.  This is not something that I have the authority to
change.

The design of UW imapd is that it works out-of-the-box in a traditional
UNIX environment without requiring any changes.

-- Mark --

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From: Christian Kratzer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 08:27:12 +0200 (CEST)

Hi,

> this behavior from imap-2001a dist as well. my host platform is solaris 8

does your mta set system resource limits before calling procmail ?
Postfix for example has a default of about 50mb for mailbox size.
If you have postfix check with postconf and update mailbox_size_limit.

	vesihiisi# postconf | grep mailbox_size_limit
	mailbox_size_limit = 512000000
	vesihiisi#

Greetings
Christian

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