#425681 courier-imap: maildirmake should repair Maildir

Package:
courier-imap
Source:
courier
Description:
Courier mail server - IMAP server
Submitter:
Greg Kochanski
Date:
2026-05-14 03:19:02 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#425681#5
Date:
2007-05-23 09:29:00 UTC
From:
To:


In the course of a disk crash,
I lost all empty directories.
(They weren't backed up. Normally, who would care?)
But courier cares if you lose the
tmp directories in Maildir.

Courier gives a fairly obscure error message
(which could be improved) saying that it
cannot open a folder.   This message turns out
to be fairly confusing, because one can look
via ls -l, and the folder is actually there.
What's missing is actually a subdirectory of that
folder.

Since this is a rare problem, it may not be worth
fixing the error message, though perhaps logging
something more precise might be a good idea.

But, alternatively, it would be a good idea
to extend maildirmake so that it would not
only create a set of maildirs, but fix them
if they are broken.

It would also be a useful security enhancement,
if it checked and set permissions correctly.

I found a suitable script, at
http://alma.ch/blogs/bahut/2005/09/repair-courier-imap-maildir.html .
It works nicely and fixed my problem,
so perhaps it should become part of the official distribution.
#425681#10
Date:
2007-05-23 09:42:19 UTC
From:
To:
Greg Kochanski wrote:

Assumptions like that are obviously a bad idea for backup/restores.

OK, confusing/obscure error messages should be improved if possible.

But, after all it is the job of the system administrator to preserve the
integrity of the directory structure.

Regards
	Racke
#425681#15
Date:
2007-05-26 13:05:33 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Racke and Greg,

Am 2007-05-23 11:42:19, schrieb Stefan Hornburg:

ACK.

ACK.

So, I have over 17.000 Users aith more then 500.000 directories and
over 200.000.000 files on it and should check all $USER Maildirs?

I think, courier should be more Error-Tollerant.

I will ask this question on the <courier> list the weekend.

Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
    Michelle Konzack
    Systemadministrator
    Tamay Dogan Network
    Debian GNU/Linux Consultant
#425681#20
Date:
2007-05-26 16:32:15 UTC
From:
To:
Michelle Konzack wrote:

Only if you have harddisk problems or delete randomly directories.

The structure of a Maildir is well defined and there is no need to
be more tolerant for errors. In fact, that might hide serious
problem.

Regards
	Racke
#425681#23
Date:
2007-05-26 16:33:09 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

The Interchange projects exhibits on the Linuxtag in Berlin
(30.5-2.6.), hall 14.1 booth 10.
I'm in Berlin for the whole week, checking emails only if I get a chance to.

Regards
         Racke
#425681#28
Date:
2026-05-14 03:17:02 UTC
From:
To:
Michelle,

I have recently taken over maintenance of the courier packages.  I apologize
that it has been so long since someone has replied to this bug report.  Can
you please provide information about the responses you received when you
reported this to the Courier mailing list?
#425681#31
Date:
2026-05-14 03:17:02 UTC
From:
To:
Michelle,

I have recently taken over maintenance of the courier packages.  I apologize
that it has been so long since someone has replied to this bug report.  Can
you please provide information about the responses you received when you
reported this to the Courier mailing list?