On Feb 27, 2005, at 4:30 PM, Sean Colins - Core Professional Services
wrote:
Dear list, and Apple monitors,
If anyone in the Mail Server group at Apple is listening, I will be
able to handle the work around to this problem for now, but every
client I have is talking about bringing in another solution to handle
their mail if this isn't fixed in Tiger Server. Please give me an
indication if possible that this bug has been properly logged and will
be fixed! Thanks.
I have been specializing in Apple's OS X Server mail implementation
now for several years through all the changes, and have been generally
happy with the results. What I have not been particularly happy about
is a certain lack of stability with 10.3 mail server under certain
circumstances. Specific problems are apparent with database
corruption, and a frequent need for repair of the mail database,
resulting in the redelivery of any mail that was stored on the server
as new messages. I am listing the fix for the repair of the mail
database here, because it is openly available on the Apple Support
site, and because it is somewhat difficult to locate, but also to
point attention to a problem that affects Cyrus in Apple's
implementation of it's Mail server, but somehow seems less prevalent
in the open source Cyrus community, based on my observations of that
community.
Yeah the stuipd log rolling bug has been with us for a while now. It
gets some installs and not others and just when you think an update has
fixed it the next one brings it back.
The problem seems to occur because Cyrus looses the permission to
write to its own log files. I have seen this happen on servers
providing mail to over a thousand accounts, and seen it affect servers
providing mail to only a couple of dozen accounts, so the number of
accounts is not the problem. But mail volume may be. Another
possibility is log volume and the frequency of write outs to the log
files. I am uncertain.
The easy solution is to just pre-touch a bunch of log files with the
correct permissions. If you create 100 empty logs then you should be
set for quite a while.
I have spoken with Apple support about this, and have found that they
are aware of the problem, but had not at the time of my last
communication with them been able to replicate the problem in their
labs. That was in December, so I'm hopeful that has changed and a fix
is forthcoming.
How to Fix the Mail Database on OS X Mail Server
1. Stop the cyrus (IMAP/POP) server.
2. Execute these commands in Terminal:
$ su root$ mv /var/imap /var/imap.old
$ /usr/bin/cyrus/tools/mkimap
$ chown -R cyrus:mail /var/imap
$ sudo -u cyrus /usr/bin/cyrus/bin/reconstruct -i
3. Restart the cyrus (IMAP/POP) server, and verify that mail is
working.
4. If a mailbox is missing for a particular user account, delete the
account from the mail application at the client computer, quit the
mail application, then reconfigure it (alternatively you could
configure a mail client that has not been used with this account
before)
If Using MailMan, go through these additional steps.
Executing this command should bring the permissions back to the
correct state and re-enable your mailing lists:
sudo /usr/share/mailman/bin/check_perms -f
I run the mailman bit everynight via cron.
Josh
--
Josh Wisenbaker, ACSA
http://www.afp548.com
Breaking my server to save yours.
