I'm afraid it doesn't seem to be working.
I've compiled a patched 2.2.6 dovecot with the patch you sent and installed it in a production server (had to be 2.2.6 cause we've upgraded all the rest since I begun this thread months ago) and although we still have mbox corruptions (rarely as before) the server isn't crashing :

Oct 30 11:15:19 pop04 dovecot: pop3-login: Login: user=<arto...@otenet.gr>, method=PLAIN, rip=85.72.232.35, lip=83.235.66.43, mpid=24419, secured, session=<+0ywxfHpIQBVSOgj> Oct 30 11:15:20 pop04 dovecot: pop3(arto...@otenet.gr): Disconnected: Logged out top=0/0, retr=0/0, del=0/1336, size=471029518 Oct 30 11:19:12 pop04 dovecot: lmtp(2863, arto...@otenet.gr): r7U3KnyhcFIvCwAAckDtvw: msgid=<e1vbrvh-00040e...@cpmail.force24.dedicated.catalyst2.com>: size=17823 saved mail to INBOX Oct 30 11:33:12 pop04 dovecot: pop3-login: Login: user=<arto...@otenet.gr>, method=PLAIN, rip=85.72.224.94, lip=83.235.66.43, mpid=600, secured, session=<vT2aBfLpxQBVSOBe> Oct 30 11:33:12 pop04 dovecot: pop3(arto...@otenet.gr): Error: Syncing INBOX failed: Mailbox isn't a valid mbox file Oct 30 11:33:12 pop04 dovecot: pop3(arto...@otenet.gr): Error: Couldn't init INBOX: Mailbox isn't a valid mbox file Oct 30 11:33:12 pop04 dovecot: pop3(arto...@otenet.gr): Mailbox init failed top=0/0, retr=0/0, del=0/0, size=0 Oct 30 11:33:33 pop04 dovecot: lmtp(16314, arto...@otenet.gr): Au4vIMqucFK6PwAAckDtvw: msgid=<004401ced552$bb5ecd70$321c6850$@planet.nl>: size=7975817 save failed to INBOX: Mailbox isn't a valid mbox file

Perhaps the patch is only valid for 2.1.16 and needs to be modified for 2.2.6 ?

Thank you for your time
Dimos Alevizos


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Mbox corruption - Inbox beginning with 'FFrom' or 'FrFrom'
From: Timo Sirainen <t...@iki.fi>
To: Dimos Alevizos <dalev...@otenet.gr>
CC: dovecot@dovecot.org, Dimitris Paouris <dp...@otenet.gr>
Date: 26/06/2013 06:59 μμ

It crashes one specific IMAP/POP3 session, so others are unaffected. The 
potential problems:

  * It might cause the user's mbox to become crashing constantly. so first crash -> 
client reconnects -> client attempts the same operation -> crash again. Then 
again, this might not happen, it depends.

  * The mbox file would probably become slightly more corrupted than normally, 
because it doesn't finish moving data around. No data should get actually lost, 
but some parts could become duplicated (e.g. some headers or even mails, 
possibly causing UID renumbering = redownloading).

So not ideal in production, but shouldn't be too bad either, especially if you 
just wait for the first crash and then immediately switch to the old unpatched 
version.

On 26.6.2013, at 10.21, Dimos Alevizos <dalev...@otenet.gr> wrote:

Hi,

I haven't had the time to compile it yet, but a question just occurred.
Given that it's so rare and we can't reproduce it on a dev server, how safe is 
this to use on a production server ?
When you say "crash" you mean the whole dovecot server or that specific 
client's child ?

D.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Mbox corruption - Inbox beginning with 'FFrom' or 
'FrFrom'
From: dalevizo <dalev...@otenet.gr>
To: Timo Sirainen <t...@iki.fi>
CC: dovecot@dovecot.org, Dimitris Paouris <dp...@otenet.gr>
Date: 24/06/2013 01:41 μμ

Thanx I'll try the patch as soon as possible and I'll let you know.
It is indeed very rare. We're only seeing 4-5 corruptions in about 13
million logins per day.
I've been trying to convince our design team that we should move to
maildir, but the truth is that it's quite a change, and we're way too
busy to deal with everything else AND a migration from mbox to maildir.

D.

On Mon 24/06/2013 13:16, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On 19.6.2013, at 16.00, Dimos Alevizos <dalev...@otenet.gr> wrote:

we're having some problems with our dovecot setup.
I've seen similar problems in the mailing list some years ago but alas wasn't 
able to find a solution.

Our setup is as follows :
An MX farm (postfix) sends mails via LMTP to a director farm (dovecot 2.1.12) 
which proxies pop3/imap/lmtp traffic to a dovecot farm (dovecot 2.1.16).
All mailboxes and indexes are on NFS and all servers are Centos.

The problem is that at times we see mailboxes (all of them are in mbox format) 
beginning with FFrom or FrFrom and of course dovecot says it's not a valid mbox 
file.

This is quite an old bug, but it happens rarely enough that I haven't been able 
to reproduce and fix it. Actually people hadn't complained about it for a long 
time now, so I had assumed it had somehow gotten fixed already.

With the attached debug patch it should crash instead of (completely) 
corrupting the mbox file. Debugging the resulting core file with gdb could be 
useful in figuring this out.

Although I wouldn't recommend mbox format for any big installation anyway..








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