[CentOS] Dovecot .99 Bug - LF not found where expected

[Bazooka Joe]

upgrade to 1.0 - fixes several bugs

w/ .99 outlook will spontaneously redownload all the main in your
mailbox thinking it is new.

that lf error was so bad on my server that I wrote a perl script to
check for it and fix it ran w/ cron every min. (this was on a fc 4 box
- should be same)

$w=`/usr/bin/tail -n 500 /var/log/maillog`;
if ($w =~ /LF not found where expected/) {
    $w=~/\/var\/mail\/(.*):/;
    print $1;
    $m=`/usr/bin/formail -ds </var/mail/$1 >>/var/mail/$1.rebuild`;
    $t=`/bin/cp /var/mail/$1.rebuild /var/mail/$1`;
    $r=`/bin/rm /var/mail/$1.rebuild`;
}

On 6/7/07, John Hinton <webmaster at ew3d.com> wrote:
> John Hinton wrote:
> > After about three years of this, it seems I have finally gotten
> > somewhere near to the bottom of this.
> >
> > The symptom:
> >
> > Suddenly a user cannot download their email. Checking again through
> > SquirrelMail, I get an error which says a log was written.
> >
> > Going to the logs I see
> >
> > "imap(username): Error indexing mbox file /var/mail/username: LF not
> > found where expected"
> >
> > Using Webmin's read mail module, I can see the messages. So, I move
> > them to another account, but this is not yet the end of it. I was at
> > first having to delete the mbox and then I'd send a test message in to
> > recreate the mbox. But today, I tried a different tack.
> >
> > I opened the now empty mbox in vi and found one blank line (LF). I
> > deleted that line and then moved the mail back in and everything was
> > fixed. So the line was still left behind.
> >
> > The next time this happens, I'm going to try to delete a LF from the
> > top of the mbox file to see if it is fixed without moving the mail.
> >
> > I have read several places, although this is extremely difficult to
> > track as there seems to be a multiple from address issue for some
> > releases.. but anyway, I did finally find that dovecot .99 has an
> > issue with leaving behind an extra linefeed at the beginning of the
> > mbox. Deleting this linefeed fixes the problem. Supposedly dovecot 1
> > has fixed this problem.
> >
> > I have found many reports of problems on Fedora and RedHat. Also,
> > Debian has a closed bug report regarding this issue as they have moved
> > forward to dovecot-1.0 and it doesn't have this bug. The issue seems
> > to not have any relation to the mailserver, as I saw both reports of
> > problems on at least Sendmail and Postfix.
> >
> > Why are we still bugged with this? Seems that this is a bug that
> > RedHat should be aware of?
> >
> > The problem is it only rarely happens. I have no idea how to repeat
> > the issue. It always seems to be an Outlook user, although that is by
> > far the most prevalent email client in use by our users and it might
> > just be chance.
> >
> > So, what to do from here? Bug report to RedHat? This is most
> > irritating! I can't even guess how many times I've fixed these mboxes.
> > I'm about ready to toss dovecot in the trash until 1 becomes the RH
> > standard unless there is a fix or upgrade from Redhat.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > John Hinton
> Having had yet another of these errors, I was able to test deleting the
> first line in the mail file. Removing that single LF fixed the problem.
>
> Still wondering what I should do as this is obviously something that is
> now very old and very irritating. It is a bug.
>
> John Hinton
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