Shifting from Maildir server to mbox

[maverick23]

Hi,

I have a server which has maildir system on it... now i have to shift account from that system to mbox system...

how do i convert old maild from maildir to mbox?

Rajat

 

[tweakservers]

try this thread:

http://forums.cpanel.net/showpost.php?p=262874&postcount=2

 

[Spiral]

Why in the world would you want to go from maildir back to mbox?

I would recommend updating the new server to use maildir!

 

[superiorhost]

What is the advantage supposed to be with this maildir system???

We installed it last week, and I have had nothing bot complaint after complaint from our customers.

What is the bennifit??

Why would I not want to revert back to the mbox system?

Someone please anwer with a real answer, and not a smart ellic response. I am thinking of changing back today, unless there is a real good reason why this is better than the old mail system.

Thank you,
Tim L

 

[ujr]

maildir has many advantages, including but not limited to:

more efficient file structure
easier on the cpu
avoiding file locking

etc etc...

What kind of problems were your customers complaining of?

Depending on your cpanel and horde, the main cpanel user account may no longer be able to access all the accounts email. This is a drawback, but if you want to enable this functionality, you can do it with symlinking the users folders, either manually or with a script.

 

[superiorhost]

Hi,
The biggest problem is the loss of neomail address books and saved emails. I wasn't told before we changed, that this would happen.
We were getting attacked by spammers big time, completely shutting down ligit exim connections, and was told this would help stop that.

Well, it didnt', but we finally got it stopped. Now, just one complaint after another from customers.
I do think that by changing the neomail folder ownership back to mail, instead of the user name, it might let people look at their neomail files, but not do anything with them... I haven't tested that yet.

Also, instead of getting less spam, the customers are complaining of getting more than ever. Like it is no longer looking at their mail filters.

Yes, I also have several customers that liked logging into one account and checking all the others. that is not a major issue though.

Tim L

 

[ujr]

The mailbox type, by itself will not by any means, have any impact on what spam gets through or not. That is more realted to spamd (spamassassin) and any other filtering you have in place. In fact, that you mention that your exim was failing leads me to believe that the problem may be more with the filters themselves, perhaps overloading your cpu??? Or, maybe something is not up-to-date, such as your perl or SA etc?

Since we don't offer (enable) neomail on any of our servers, I can't specifically comment on the addressbook problem, but it is most likely an easy fix. You can probably find it covered in these forums.

 

[superiorhost]

Thanks for the info.
No, exim was not failing due to config errors on the server.

It was being bombarded by spammers trying to make smtp connections. It maxed out the connections, and my users would get the error: too many concurrent connections. The cpu load stayed low. Below 1.5 .

I raised the hard limit from 100 to 300, then 500, and still, just kept happening. Now that thing have stopped, itis set back to 100 and no problems.

I blocked some IPs and pissed the spammers off, sothey attacked in full force. It sucked. lol

I will do more searching, but havnt found yet how to enable neomail or get their address books and such to the customers when using maildir. I have been looking. I think maildir must have something that is intentionally blocking neomail for security, so this may not be an option without converting back, to let the customers get these files into a horde folder, then possibly changing back to maildir.

Thank you,
Tim L

 

[ujr]

here are a couple of things that you could check: (you may already have done so, but hey...)

Is all the spam originating on external servers?
Install bfd and make sure it is set to drop offending IPs with iptables
Are all your accounts set to use :fail:?
You could install Chripy;s eximdeny script (works very nicely, see http://www.configserver.com/free/eximdeny.html)
Also try setting up Antivirus.exim (see http://www.webhostgear.com/338.html)

 

[superiorhost]

Hi,
Yes, I have chirpies script, and I thought antivirus.exim was a cpanel script.. it has been in every server I have. Honestly it is a pain in the butt sometimes, as people try to send ligit mails and have to compress some things.

I tell all customers to set to fail instead of blackhole now days,, but some use blackhole and filtering to make forwards (not sure why) but can't force them all to use fail, because it breaks that filter method.

I think it is chirpy's script.. exim deny, for dictionary attacks. It seems to do a decent job but only if they hit 3 or more addresses at a time, and I notice now days, spammers are sending 1 or 2 at a time to get around that.

bfd was aother step I was going to take this week. It isn't installed yet, but have bookmarked the pages to get it installed.

Yes, most of the spam is coming from off server. Other spam from a script.. we are working on that, but you can tell it comes from the server, because they can hit every user name on the server.
Spammers need to die!

Thanks,
Tim L

 

[ujr]

bfd with iptables works beautifully. I'd try that first. ...

Also, with chirpy's script, you can edit the cron to purge every few hours or every day, rather than every hour (as is the default). For trusted servers/senders, you should add them to the /etc/exim_deny_whitelist to avoid any problems.

 

[superiorhost]

Ok,
We will be installing bfd. Hopefully it will help.

As for the mail script clearing the list of IPs.. I have mine set to daily.

Thank you,
TIm

 

[bigjohn]

maildir has many advantages, including but not limited to:

more efficient file structure
easier on the cpu
avoiding file locking

etc etc...

What kind of problems were your customers complaining of?

Depending on your cpanel and horde, the main cpanel user account may no longer be able to access all the accounts email. This is a drawback, but if you want to enable this functionality, you can do it with symlinking the users folders, either manually or with a script.

See, all of these little 'advantages' help the server load, not the customer convenience aspect... and they place a burden on other things (like having to script symlinks, or add them manually)... Why would I want to spend 40 or more man hours to save .5 cpu utilization?

 

[ianmarie]

This is a drawback, but if you want to enable this functionality, you can do it with symlinking the users folders, either manually or with a script.

Could you be specific about eg a script which could do this; or what sort of symlink
as it is certainly a function that several sysadmins from accounts on my server are now missing - and unhappy about.

Thanks

 

[ianmarie]

Could you be specific about eg a script which could do this; or what sort of symlink
as it is certainly a function that several sysadmins from accounts on my server are now missing - and unhappy about.

Thanks

Partial answer to my own question....

ln -s /home/username/mail/domainname/subuser /home/username/mail/.subuser

create "link" "symbolic" "with a target of path" (sub-user's mail folder) "known as" (ie name you want to see as this user in Horde)

and chown chgrp created symlink to that main user's username

This creates a symbolic link form the main user's mailaccount to the sub-users mail folder. Note the 'dot' . for subuser in the link name (last part). The dot is necessary for the mail server to recognise this as a sub mail folder of the admin user. You could give the ./subuser a more distinctive name