RE: Dovecot Bulletin

[Steffen Kaiser]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016, micah wrote:


Using doveadm copy is an interesting solution because of the
hardlinking. I wonder how fast it is, because almost every time I use
the -A flag, the iterations over 100k users takes a long time.

We email the 'bulletin' to all of our users, everyone gets a copy, that
way an admin doesn't need to do it, but it does mean that we duplicate
the data quite a lot.


hmm, I do have some sort of Bulletin (approx. one message per year) that I 
deliver per script to Maildir:


1. I sent the message to myself
2. discover it in my mail spool
3. cd /mailspool ; ls -U | while read u; do
 if test -d "$u/Maildir/new"; then
  ln /mailspool/myself/Maildir/new/message "$u/Maildir/new"
 fi
done

Steps 1 and 2 can be simulated easily or combined with a mailbox, that 
fires a script for new arrivals. Of course, this script depends on your

local situation.



Kevin Kershner <cstke...@outlook.com> writes:


It also got the bulletin out to new users without admin intervention.

Sent from Mobile

From: Doug Hardie<mailto:bc...@lafn.org>
Sent: ‎2/‎22/‎2016 4:02
To: Dovecot Mailing List<mailto:dovecot@dovecot.org>; Timo 
Sirainen<mailto:t...@iki.fi>
Cc: Kevin Kershner<mailto:cstke...@outlook.com>
Subject: Re: Dovecot Bulletin



On 20 February 2016, at 18:14, Timo Sirainen <t...@iki.fi> wrote:

On 21 Feb 2016, at 02:50, Kevin Kershner <cstke...@outlook.com> wrote:


I'd like to revisit and old post if I may, will/does Dovecot support the old
qpopper "Bulletin" ability?

Basically I need a simple way of posting bulletins to all domain users.
Qpopper maintained a bulletin db for each user and sent them the next
bulletin in sequence.


I guess there could be a plugin that does this check on each login. But would 
it actually be useful? Why would it be better than simply sending the mail to 
all the users? For example:

doveadm save -A < bulletin.txt


The reasons for bulletins as I see it are:

1.  The doveadm save command is undocumented.  It does show a cryptic line in the output 
of the command "doveadm".  However, it doesn't give any clue what it does or 
how to provide the message.  Your note above provides considerably more information on 
that command.   I tested it and it works as you have indicated though.

2.  The doveadm save command causes the email to be saved in each user's 
mailbox.  If you have a lot of users, thats a lot of wasted disk space.  
Qpopper's bulletins only kept one copy and every user downloaded from that 
copy.  All that was retained per user was a counter of the last bulletin's 
sequence number that was downloaded.

— Doug





- -- 
Steffen Kaiser

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RE: Dovecot Bulletin

[Kevin Kershner]

Yup, exactly what I hoped to avoid.
Maybe a new feature to consider for future release.

K

-Original Message-
From: micah [mailto:mi...@riseup.net] 
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 12:19 PM
To: Kevin Kershner; Doug Hardie; Dovecot Mailing List; Timo Sirainen
Subject: RE: Dovecot Bulletin


Using doveadm copy is an interesting solution because of the hardlinking. I 
wonder how fast it is, because almost every time I use the -A flag, the 
iterations over 100k users takes a long time.

We email the 'bulletin' to all of our users, everyone gets a copy, that way an 
admin doesn't need to do it, but it does mean that we duplicate the data quite 
a lot.

Kevin Kershner <cstke...@outlook.com> writes:

> It also got the bulletin out to new users without admin intervention.
>
> Sent from Mobile
> 
> From: Doug Hardie<mailto:bc...@lafn.org>
> Sent: ‎2/‎22/‎2016 4:02
> To: Dovecot Mailing List<mailto:dovecot@dovecot.org>; Timo 
> Sirainen<mailto:t...@iki.fi>
> Cc: Kevin Kershner<mailto:cstke...@outlook.com>
> Subject: Re: Dovecot Bulletin
>
>
>> On 20 February 2016, at 18:14, Timo Sirainen <t...@iki.fi> wrote:
>>
>> On 21 Feb 2016, at 02:50, Kevin Kershner <cstke...@outlook.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'd like to revisit and old post if I may, will/does Dovecot support 
>>> the old qpopper "Bulletin" ability?
>>>
>>> Basically I need a simple way of posting bulletins to all domain users.
>>> Qpopper maintained a bulletin db for each user and sent them the 
>>> next bulletin in sequence.
>>
>> I guess there could be a plugin that does this check on each login. But 
>> would it actually be useful? Why would it be better than simply sending the 
>> mail to all the users? For example:
>>
>> doveadm save -A < bulletin.txt
>
> The reasons for bulletins as I see it are:
>
> 1.  The doveadm save command is undocumented.  It does show a cryptic line in 
> the output of the command "doveadm".  However, it doesn't give any clue what 
> it does or how to provide the message.  Your note above provides considerably 
> more information on that command.   I tested it and it works as you have 
> indicated though.
>
> 2.  The doveadm save command causes the email to be saved in each user's 
> mailbox.  If you have a lot of users, thats a lot of wasted disk space.  
> Qpopper's bulletins only kept one copy and every user downloaded from that 
> copy.  All that was retained per user was a counter of the last bulletin's 
> sequence number that was downloaded.
>
> — Doug

RE: Dovecot Bulletin

[micah]

Using doveadm copy is an interesting solution because of the
hardlinking. I wonder how fast it is, because almost every time I use
the -A flag, the iterations over 100k users takes a long time.

We email the 'bulletin' to all of our users, everyone gets a copy, that
way an admin doesn't need to do it, but it does mean that we duplicate
the data quite a lot.

Kevin Kershner <cstke...@outlook.com> writes:

> It also got the bulletin out to new users without admin intervention.
>
> Sent from Mobile
> 
> From: Doug Hardie<mailto:bc...@lafn.org>
> Sent: ‎2/‎22/‎2016 4:02
> To: Dovecot Mailing List<mailto:dovecot@dovecot.org>; Timo 
> Sirainen<mailto:t...@iki.fi>
> Cc: Kevin Kershner<mailto:cstke...@outlook.com>
> Subject: Re: Dovecot Bulletin
>
>
>> On 20 February 2016, at 18:14, Timo Sirainen <t...@iki.fi> wrote:
>>
>> On 21 Feb 2016, at 02:50, Kevin Kershner <cstke...@outlook.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'd like to revisit and old post if I may, will/does Dovecot support the old
>>> qpopper "Bulletin" ability?
>>>
>>> Basically I need a simple way of posting bulletins to all domain users.
>>> Qpopper maintained a bulletin db for each user and sent them the next
>>> bulletin in sequence.
>>
>> I guess there could be a plugin that does this check on each login. But 
>> would it actually be useful? Why would it be better than simply sending the 
>> mail to all the users? For example:
>>
>> doveadm save -A < bulletin.txt
>
> The reasons for bulletins as I see it are:
>
> 1.  The doveadm save command is undocumented.  It does show a cryptic line in 
> the output of the command "doveadm".  However, it doesn't give any clue what 
> it does or how to provide the message.  Your note above provides considerably 
> more information on that command.   I tested it and it works as you have 
> indicated though.
>
> 2.  The doveadm save command causes the email to be saved in each user's 
> mailbox.  If you have a lot of users, thats a lot of wasted disk space.  
> Qpopper's bulletins only kept one copy and every user downloaded from that 
> copy.  All that was retained per user was a counter of the last bulletin's 
> sequence number that was downloaded.
>
> — Doug

Re: Dovecot Bulletin

[Timo Sirainen]

> On 22 Feb 2016, at 13:02, Doug Hardie  wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 20 February 2016, at 18:14, Timo Sirainen  wrote:
>> 
>> On 21 Feb 2016, at 02:50, Kevin Kershner  wrote:
>>> 
>>> I'd like to revisit and old post if I may, will/does Dovecot support the old
>>> qpopper "Bulletin" ability?
>>> 
>>> Basically I need a simple way of posting bulletins to all domain users.
>>> Qpopper maintained a bulletin db for each user and sent them the next
>>> bulletin in sequence.
>> 
>> I guess there could be a plugin that does this check on each login. But 
>> would it actually be useful? Why would it be better than simply sending the 
>> mail to all the users? For example:
>> 
>> doveadm save -A < bulletin.txt
> 
> The reasons for bulletins as I see it are:
> 
> 1.  The doveadm save command is undocumented.  It does show a cryptic line in 
> the output of the command "doveadm".  However, it doesn't give any clue what 
> it does or how to provide the message.  Your note above provides considerably 
> more information on that command.   I tested it and it works as you have 
> indicated though.

Yeah, would be good to add a man page to it..

> 2.  The doveadm save command causes the email to be saved in each user's 
> mailbox.  If you have a lot of users, thats a lot of wasted disk space.  
> Qpopper's bulletins only kept one copy and every user downloaded from that 
> copy.  All that was retained per user was a counter of the last bulletin's 
> sequence number that was downloaded.

With sdbox and Maildir formats the mails can be hard linked to provide only one 
copy. This would have to be done by delivering the mail once and then using 
doveadm copy to copy it to everybody else. These kind of bulletins would be 
pretty complicated to implement in a generic way.

RE: Dovecot Bulletin

[Kevin Kershner]

It also got the bulletin out to new users without admin intervention.

Sent from Mobile

From: Doug Hardie<mailto:bc...@lafn.org>
Sent: ‎2/‎22/‎2016 4:02
To: Dovecot Mailing List<mailto:dovecot@dovecot.org>; Timo 
Sirainen<mailto:t...@iki.fi>
Cc: Kevin Kershner<mailto:cstke...@outlook.com>
Subject: Re: Dovecot Bulletin


> On 20 February 2016, at 18:14, Timo Sirainen <t...@iki.fi> wrote:
>
> On 21 Feb 2016, at 02:50, Kevin Kershner <cstke...@outlook.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'd like to revisit and old post if I may, will/does Dovecot support the old
>> qpopper "Bulletin" ability?
>>
>> Basically I need a simple way of posting bulletins to all domain users.
>> Qpopper maintained a bulletin db for each user and sent them the next
>> bulletin in sequence.
>
> I guess there could be a plugin that does this check on each login. But would 
> it actually be useful? Why would it be better than simply sending the mail to 
> all the users? For example:
>
> doveadm save -A < bulletin.txt

The reasons for bulletins as I see it are:

1.  The doveadm save command is undocumented.  It does show a cryptic line in 
the output of the command "doveadm".  However, it doesn't give any clue what it 
does or how to provide the message.  Your note above provides considerably more 
information on that command.   I tested it and it works as you have indicated 
though.

2.  The doveadm save command causes the email to be saved in each user's 
mailbox.  If you have a lot of users, thats a lot of wasted disk space.  
Qpopper's bulletins only kept one copy and every user downloaded from that 
copy.  All that was retained per user was a counter of the last bulletin's 
sequence number that was downloaded.

— Doug

Re: Dovecot Bulletin

[Doug Hardie]

> On 20 February 2016, at 18:14, Timo Sirainen  wrote:
> 
> On 21 Feb 2016, at 02:50, Kevin Kershner  wrote:
>> 
>> I'd like to revisit and old post if I may, will/does Dovecot support the old
>> qpopper "Bulletin" ability?
>> 
>> Basically I need a simple way of posting bulletins to all domain users.
>> Qpopper maintained a bulletin db for each user and sent them the next
>> bulletin in sequence.
> 
> I guess there could be a plugin that does this check on each login. But would 
> it actually be useful? Why would it be better than simply sending the mail to 
> all the users? For example:
> 
> doveadm save -A < bulletin.txt

The reasons for bulletins as I see it are:

1.  The doveadm save command is undocumented.  It does show a cryptic line in 
the output of the command "doveadm".  However, it doesn't give any clue what it 
does or how to provide the message.  Your note above provides considerably more 
information on that command.   I tested it and it works as you have indicated 
though.

2.  The doveadm save command causes the email to be saved in each user's 
mailbox.  If you have a lot of users, thats a lot of wasted disk space.  
Qpopper's bulletins only kept one copy and every user downloaded from that 
copy.  All that was retained per user was a counter of the last bulletin's 
sequence number that was downloaded.

— Doug

Re: Dovecot Bulletin

[Timo Sirainen]

On 21 Feb 2016, at 02:50, Kevin Kershner  wrote:
> 
> I'd like to revisit and old post if I may, will/does Dovecot support the old
> qpopper "Bulletin" ability?
> 
> Basically I need a simple way of posting bulletins to all domain users.
> Qpopper maintained a bulletin db for each user and sent them the next
> bulletin in sequence.

I guess there could be a plugin that does this check on each login. But would 
it actually be useful? Why would it be better than simply sending the mail to 
all the users? For example:

doveadm save -A < bulletin.txt