Hello, You have found what may be the biggest problems with free software. Documentation and Support. Sysadmins such as myself must take these issues into account when deciding upon a platform to use for delivery of services such as email. Using a package such as Cyrus requires a somewhat higher level of knowledge. Quite frankly, if I were to believe the test programs included with cyrus my setup would not be working ( but it is ).
Documentation is sadly the last thing that gets done. We here constantly bemoan that fact about our own internal projects, but the problem remains. Once a working service is in place writing down what you did to get it working gets pre-empted by trying to get something else working. All I can say is keep prodding. If you don't get an answer from the list its generally because no one knows the answer. Don't let this stop you from asking though, or digging through the list archive. I've found help on the list myself for a couple of problems. Since I've not used any other IMAP servers I can't compare them to Cyrus. However, Cyrus has worked well for us. We currently have four machines with over five thousand accounts on three of the machines. Our biggest problem is getting a satisfactory turnaround on restoration requests. We have a new backup/restore product we hope to implement soon which we believe will help. We have had other problems to be sure, but frankly, you will have problems with any software. I would say that the people at CMU have done a good job. I do hope though that they listen to your comments and those of others with similar concerns. Regards, Earl Shannon -- Systems Programmer, Computing Services, Information Technology NC State University. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ershanno Erik Steffl wrote: > > cyrus and related programs are some of the hardest programs to > troubleshoot I ever encountered. I read the docs, asked on the mailing > list (this one) etc. but it seems like there's simply no way to tell > what's going on. I enabled all the logging, I even tried test (from > sieve directory of cyrus source tree). > > how do people cope with that? I see cyrus being recommended as one of > the best imap servers (and when it works it works, I didn't have any > troubles) but to set it up or do any changes is basically impossible. > > e.g. this time I changed the sieve script, made a typo and it didn't > work, all I've got is the following message: > > Feb 1 00:30:13 localhost deliver[23370]: sieve runtime error for erik > id <bgISrC.A.pyC.YElW8@murphy>: Fileinto: Mailbox does not exist > > indicates what's going on but is not particularly helpful. it doesn't > say where it tries to deliver the message. > > another example: I ran test (from sieve subtree) and changed the order > of script and test message (my fault), but all it says it: line 1: parse > error. WTF? so I started a debugger but I couldn't get to where the > error actually occurs (it was in yyparse for which there is no source). > > I solved the problem but it was extremely unpleasant, made worse by > the fact that program could have easily provided all the important info > (I also had number of other similar troubles, including inability of > using any other authentification method but sasl_pwcheck_method: sasldb, > I haven't solved that one yet). > > Q: how do other people cope with troubleshooting problems of cyrus > (and mainly sieve)? Are there any tools that I am not aware of? Is it > getting better (the above is with older cyrus/sieve (test is from > 2.0.16, real sieve from 1.6.x, but says 2.0 in X-sieve header). > > TIA! > > erik
