Hello!
I'm sorry about this long email. I just want to describe below
everything that I have tried, so you won't have to ask about it.
I'm a long time FreeBSD user, but I had to switch OS because
I got problems with my main work tool tmux after upgrading to
FreeBSD 10. OpenBSD tmux seems fine, but another very important
tool (dovecot) is giving me problems in OpenBSD.
I have pkg_added dovecot-2.2.10 and mutt-1.5.22p0v0-sidebar-compressed,
and I have merged my few changes to the dovecot configuration into the
OpenBSD dovecot files.
I get this in /var/log/maillog when I start mutt:
Sep 21 13:21:27 xxx dovecot: imap(yyy): Fatal: pool_system_realloc(4294967296):
Out of memory
Sep 21 13:21:30 xxx dovecot: imap(yyy): Fatal: master: service(imap): child
17371 returned error 83 (Out of memory (service imap { vsz_limit=4096 MB }, you
may need to increase it) - set CORE_OUTOFMEM=1 environment to get core dump)
And while mutt is trying to login, before dovecot reaches the memory
limit, the server freezes up completely with load average above 8.
I have entered this line in /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf, and tried
gradually increasing it from 256 M:
default_vsz_limit = 4096 M
I also entered this in /etc/login.conf, as the pkg-readmes file states:
dovecot:\
:openfiles-cur=4096:\
:openfiles-max=4096:\
:tc=daemon:
(As you can see I tried increasing those values as well.)
I tried logging out and logging in, and then (as root) stopping and
starting dovecot.
My server has 1 GB RAM.
My mail directory is 2.3 GB, with a little more than 10.000 files.
But this doesn't matter, because dovecot seems to never reach those
files. I even tried removing that whole directory tree and replacing
it with an empty mail directory, but had the same memory problem.
The only thing that helps is if I comment out this line in my .muttrc:
set spoolfile="imap://localhost/INBOX"
Then I can at least see all email in my mailbox in /var/mail.
When the spoolfile line is active, or when I try to change to an imap
mailbox in mutt, I get the memory error.
I have never had this problem in FreeBSD, or in DragonFlyBSD which I
also tried.
I diffed the entire dovecot configuration between DragonFlyBSD and
OpenBSD. These are the diffs that seem important:
diff -r conf.d/10-mail.conf /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf
136,137c136,138
< # filesystems (NFS or clustered filesystem).
< #mmap_disable = no
---
> # filesystems (NFS or clustered filesystem) or for some operating systems
> # which use a separate cache for mmap, such as OpenBSD.
> mmap_disable = yes
285c289
< #mbox_write_locks = dotlock fcntl
---
> mbox_write_locks = fcntl
diff -r conf.d/20-imap.conf /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf
49c49
< #imap_client_workarounds =
---
> imap_client_workarounds = delay-newmail tb-extra-mailbox-sep tb-lsub-flags
I tried setting mmap_disable = no and commenting out imap_client_workarounds,
but that didn't help. I also tried changing from fcntl to dotlock, but that
didn't help either.
I diffed /etc/mutt/Muttrc from Muttrc in DragonFlyBSD, but found no
interesting changes.
I tried starting dovecot with -F, but get no interesting output there.
Any ideas about what I can try?
I would prefer to keep using dovecot if possible, it has been very stable in
FreeBSD. If I can't solve this dovecot problem I will consider alternatives,
but I would really like to stay with my current mbox format. Not that I have
anything against maildir, I would just like to avoid converting at this moment.
I'm getting a bit desperate here. :) I have ruled out FreeBSD, DragonFlyBSD
and NetBSD, and I won't go to Linux. So OpenBSD might be my last option.
(Or I might have to split my server into DragonFly for email and OpenBSD
for tmux, but that seems a bit silly.)
Thanks!
Peter
