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