Obox: Configuration

An annotated configuration example:

# Load the obox plugin
mail_plugins = $mail_plugins obox

# How many mails to download in parallel from object storage.
#
# A higher number improves the performance, but also increases the local disk
# usage and number of used file descriptors.
mail_prefetch_count = 10

plugin {

Override setting for writes, copies, or deletes. They default to `mail_prefetch_count`.
  obox_max_parallel_writes = $mail_prefetch_count
  obox_max_parallel_copies = $mail_prefetch_count
  obox_max_parallel_deletes = $mail_prefetch_count
}

How much disk space metacache can use before old data is cleaned up.

Generally, this should be set at ~90% of the available disk space.

plugin {
  metacache_max_space = 200G
}

How much disk space on top of metacache_max_space can be used before Dovecot stops allowing more users to login.

plugin {
  metacache_max_grace = 10G
}

How often to upload important index changes to object storage? This mainly means that if a backend crashes during this time, message flag changes within this time may be lost. A longer time can however reduce the number of index bundle uploads.

plugin {
  metacache_upload_interval = 5min
}

If user was accessed this recently, assume the user's indexes are up-to-date. If not, list index bundles in object storage (or Cassandra) to see if they have changed. This typically matters only when user is being moved to another backend and soon back again, or if the user is simultaneously being accessed by multiple backends. Default is 2 seconds.

plugin {
  metacache_close_delay = 2secs
}

Core settings

mail_home = /var/vmail/%2Mu/%u

Specifies the location for the local mail cache directory. This will contain Dovecot index files and it needs to be high performance (e.g. SSD storage). Alternatively, if there is enough memory available to hold all concurrent users' data at once, a tmpfs would work as well. The "%2Mu" takes the first 2 chars of the MD5 hash of the username so everything isn't in one directory.

mail_uid = vmail
mail_gid = vmail

UNIX UID & GID which are used to access the local cache mail files.

mail_fsync = never

We can disable fsync()ing for better performance. It's not a problem if locally cached index file modifications are lost.

mail_temp_dir = /tmp

Directory where downloaded/uploaded mails are temporarily stored to. Ideally all of these would stay in memory and never hit the disk, but in some situations the mails may have to be kept for a somewhat longer time and it ends up in disk. So there should be enough disk space available in the temporary filesystem.

... tip Note /tmp should be a good choice on any recent OS, as it normally points to /dev/shm, so this temporary data is stored in memory and will never be written to disk. However, this should be checked on a per installation basis to ensure that it is true.

mailbox_list_index = yes

Enable mailbox list indexes. This is required with obox format.

mailbox_list_index_include_inbox = yes

If LISTINDEX resides in tmpfs, INBOX status should be included in list index.

Obox Configuration Options

`fs_auth_cache_dict`

Default	[None]
Value	string

Dictionary URI where fs-auth process keeps authentication cache. This allows sharing the cache between multiple servers.

`fs_auth_request_max_retries`

Default	`1`
Value	unsigned integer

If fs-auth fails to perform authentication lookup, retry the HTTP request this many times.

`fs_auth_request_timeout`

Default	`10s`
Value	time (milliseconds)

Absolute HTTP request timeout for authentication lookups.

`fs_server_backend`

Default
Value	string
See Also	Object storage server emulator

Specifies how to store files with fs-server.

`metacache_bg_root_uploads`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

By default, doing changes to folders (e.g. creating or renaming) uploads changes immediately to object storage. If this setting is enabled, the upload happens sometimes later (within metacache_upload_interval).

`metacache_close_delay`

Default	`2secs`
Value	time

`metacache_disable_bundle_list_cache`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Disable caching bundle list.

`metacache_disable_secondary_indexes`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Disable including secondary indexes into the user root bundle when using the virtual or virtual-attachments plugin.

This setting can be used to exclude the virtual and virtual-attachments folders from the user root bundle in case any problems are encountered.

`metacache_forced_refresh_interval`

Default	`8 hours`
Value	time
Changes	Added: 3.0.0

If the user indexes haven't been refreshed for this long time, force the refresh. This is done by ignoring the metacache_close_delay setting (i.e. same as if it is 0).

This setting allows highly active users' indexes still to be refreshed once in a while. (Although if the user has an active session 100% of the time, the refresh cannot be done.)

`metacache_index_merging`

Default	`v2`
Value	string
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Specifies the algorithm to use when merging folder indexes.

Algorithm	Description
`none`	Disable the merging algorithm
`v2`	The new algorithm designed specifically for this purpose of merging two indexes. This is the recommended setting.

`metacache_last_host_dict`

Default	[None]
Value	string

If this setting is configured to a valid Dictionary URI, obox looks up metacache_last_host key from dict. This is meant to be used with Palomar.

The metacache_last_host value is kept in Palomar GeoDB.

If the lookup is successful and metacache_last_host is different from the current host (cluster_backend_name), metacache is pulled from the metacache_last_host backend. Obox also updates metacache_last_host to the given dict.

`metacache_max_grace`

Default	`1G`
Value	time

How much disk space on top of metacache_max_space can be used before Dovecot stops allowing more users to login.

`metacache_max_parallel_requests`

Default	`10`
Value	unsigned integer
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Maximum number of metacache read/write operations to do in parallel.

`metacache_max_space`

Default	0
Value	size

How much disk space metacache can use before old data is cleaned up.

Generally, this should be set at ~90% of the available disk space.

`metacache_merge_max_uid_renumbers`

Default	`100`
Value	unsigned integer
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

This is used only with metacache_index_merging = v2.

If the merging detects that there are more than this many UIDs that are conflicting and would have to be renumbered, don't renumber any of them. This situation isn't expected to happen normally, and renumbering too many UIDs can cause unnecessary extra disk I/O.

The downside is that a caching IMAP client might become confused if it had previously seen different UIDs.

`metacache_priority_weights`

Default	[None]
Value	string
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

See metacache_size_weights.

`metacache_rescan_interval`

Default	`1 day`
Value	time
See Also	`metacache_roots`
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

How often to run a background metacache rescan, which makes sure that the disk space usage tracked by metacache process matches what really exists on filesystem.

The desync may happen, for example, because the metacache process (or the whole backend) crashes.

The rescanning helps with two issues:

If metacache filesystem uses more disk space than metacache process thinks, it may run out of disk space.
If metacache filesystem uses less disk space than metacache process thinks, metacache runs non-optimally since it's not filling it out as much as it could.

Setting this to 0 disables the rescan.

It's also possible to do this manually by running the doveadm metacache rescan command.

`metacache_roots`

Default	`mail_home` and `mail_chroot`
Value	string
See Also	`metacache_rescan_interval`
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

List of metacache root directories, separated with :.

Usually this is automatically parsed directly from mail_home and mail_chroot settings.

Accessing a metacache directory outside these roots will result in a warning: "Index directory is outside metacache_roots".

It's possible to disable this check entirely by setting the value to :.

TIP

This setting is required for metacache_rescan_interval.

`metacache_size_weights`

Default	[None]
Value	string
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Whenever metacache notices that metacache_max_space has been reached, it needs to delete some older index files to make space for new ones. This is done by calculating cleanup weights.

The simplest cleanup weight is to just use the user's last access UNIX timestamp as the weight. The lowest weight gets deleted first.

It's possible to enable using only simple weights by explicitly setting metacache_priority_weights and this setting to empty values. However, by default priorities are taken into account when calculating the weight.

The metacache_priority_weights setting can be used to fine tune how metacache adjusts the cleanup weights for different index priorities. There are 4 major priorities (these are also visible in e.g. doveadm metacache list output):

Priority	Description
`0`	User root indexes (highest priority)
`1`	FTS indexes
`2`	INBOX and Junk folder indexes ("special" folders)
`3`	Non-special folder indexes (lowest priority)

The metacache_priority_weights contains <percentage> <weight adjustment> pairs for each of these priorities. So, for example, the first 10% +1d applies to the user root priority and the last 100% 0 applies to other folders' priority.

The weight calculation is then done by:

Initial weight is the user's last access UNIX timestamp
metacache_priority_weights is next looked up for the given priority indexes
If the total disk space used by the indexes is equal or less than the <percentage>, add <weight adjustment> to weight. So, for example, with 10% +1d if the disk space used by index files of this priority type take <= 10% of metacache_max_space, increase the weight by 1d = 60*60*24 = 86400.
Because the initial weight is based on UNIX timestamp, the weight adjustment is also given as time. This practically means that e.g. +1d typically gives 1 extra day for the index files to exist compared to index files that don't have the weight boost.
<percentage> exists so that the weight boost doesn't cause some index files to dominate too much. For example, if root indexes' weights weren't limited, it could be possible that the system would be full of only root indexes and active users' other indexes would be cleaned almost immediately.

This setting is used to do final adjustments depending on the disk space used by this user's indexes of the specific priority. The setting is in format <low size> <low weight adjustment> <max size> <high weight adjustment>.

The weight adjustment calculation is:

If disk space is equal or less than <low size>, increase weight by (<low size> - <disk space>) * <low weight adjustment> / <low size>
Otherwise, cap the <disk space> to <max size> and increase weight by (<disk space> - <low size>) * <high weight adjustment> / (<max size> - <low size>)
The idea here is to give extra weight boost for
- Small indexes, because they're small enough that it won't matter if they live longer than most, AND
- Very large indexes, because it's so expensive to keep uploading/downloading them in object storage
With the default 2M +30 1G +120 value the priority adjustments will look like:
- 0 kB: +30
- 500 kB: +23
- 1 MB: +15
- 1,5 MB: +8
- 2 MB: 0
- 10 MB: +1
- 50 MB: +6
- 100 MB: +12
- 258 MB: +30
- 500 MB: +60
- >=1 GB: +120

Example:

plugin {
  metacache_priority_weights = 10% +1d 10% +1d 50% +1h 100% 0
  metacache_size_weights = 2M +30 1G +120
}

`metacache_socket_path`

Default	`metacache`
Value	string
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Path to communicate with metacache process.

`metacache_upload_interval`

Default	`5min`
Value	time

How often to upload important index changes to object storage?

This mainly means that if a backend crashes during this time, message flag changes within this time may be lost. A longer time can however reduce the number of index bundle uploads.

`metacache_userdb`

Default	`metacache/metacache-users.db`
Value	string
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Path to a database which metacache process periodically writes to.

This database is read by metacache at startup to get the latest state.

The path is relative to state_dir.

`obox_allow_nonreproducible_uids`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Normally Dovecot attempts to make sure that IMAP UIDs aren't lost even if a backend crashes (or if user is moved to another backend without indexes first being uploaded). This requires uploading index bundles whenever expunging recently saved mails. Setting this to "yes" avoids this extra index bundle upload at the cost of potentially changing IMAP UIDs. This could cause caching IMAP clients to become confused, possibly even causing it to delete wrong mails. Also FTS indexes may become inconsistent since they also rely on UIDs.

`obox_autofix_storage`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

If activated, when an unexpected 404 is found when retrieving a message from object storage, Dovecot will rescan the mailbox by listing its objects. If the 404-object is still listed in this query, Dovecot issues a HEAD to determine if the message actually exists. If this HEAD request returns a 404, the message is dropped from the index. The message object is not removed from the object storage.

`obox_avoid_cached_vsize`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Avoid getting the email's size from the cache whenever the email body is opened anyway. This avoid unnecessary errors if a lot of the vsizes are wrong. The vsize in dovecot.index is also automatically updated to the fixed value with or without this setting.

This setting was mainly useful due to earlier bugs that caused the vsize to be wrong in many cases.

`obox_disable_fast_copy`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Workaround for object storages with a broken copy operation. Instead perform copying by reading and writing the full object.

`obox_dont_use_object_ids`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Access objects directly via their paths instead of IDs, if possible.

`obox_fetch_lost_mails_as_empty`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
See Also	storage workarounds
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Cassandra: "Object exists in dict, but not in storage" errors will be handled by returning empty emails to the IMAP client. The tagged FETCH response will be OK instead of NO.

`obox_fs`

Default	[None]
Value	string

This setting handles the basic Object Storage configuration.

INFO

See the storage provider pages for specific parameters that can be used.

`obox_index_fs`

Default	`obox_fs`
Value	string

This setting handles the object storage configuration for index bundles.

`obox_lost_mailbox_prefix`

Default	`recovered-lost-folder-`
Value	string
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

If folder name is lost entirely due to lost index files, generate a name for the folder using this prefix.

`obox_max_parallel_copies`

Default	`mail_prefetch_count`
Value	unsigned integer

Maximum number of email HTTP copy/link operations to do in parallel.

If the storage driver supports bulk-copy/link operation, this controls how many individual copy operations can be packed into a single bulk-copy/link HTTP request.

`obox_max_parallel_deletes`

Default	`mail_prefetch_count`
Value	unsigned integer

Maximum number of email HTTP delete operations to do in parallel.

If the storage driver supports bulk-delete operation, this controls how many individual delete operations can be packed into a single bulk-delete HTTP request.

`obox_max_parallel_writes`

Default	`mail_prefetch_count`
Value	unsigned integer

Maximum number of email write HTTP operations to do in parallel.

`obox_max_rescan_mail_count`

Default	`10`
Value	unsigned integer
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Keep a maximum of this many newly saved mails in local metacache indexes before metacache is flushed to object storage. For example with a value of 10, every 11th mail triggers a metacache flush. Note that the flush isn't immediate - it will happen in the background some time within the next metacache_upload_interval.

A higher value reduces the number of index bundle uploads, but increases the number of mail downloads to fill the caches after a backend crash.

`obox_no_pop3_backend_uidls`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Enable if there are no migrated POP3 UIDLs. If enabled, don't try to look up UIDLs in any situation.

`obox_refresh_index_once_after`

Default	0
Value	unsigned integer

This forces the next mailbox open after the specified UNIX timestamp to refresh locally cached indexes to see if other backends have modified the user's indexes simultaneously.

`obox_rescan_mails_once_after`

Default	0
Value	unsigned integer

This forces the next mailbox open after the specified UNIX timestamp to rescan the mails to make sure there aren't any unindexed mails.

`obox_size_missing_action`

Default	`warn-read`
Value	string
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

This setting controls what should be done when the mail object is missing the size metadata.

Options:

Value	Description
`read`	Same as `warn-read`, but doesn't log a warning.
`stat`	Use fs_stat() to get the size, which is the fastest but doesn't work if mails are compressed or encrypted.
`warn-read`	Log a warning and fallback to reading the email to calculate its size.

`obox_track_copy_flags`

Default	`no`
Value	boolean

Try to avoid Cassandra SELECTs when expunging mails.

Enable only if dictmap/Cassandra and lazy-expunge plugin are used.

`obox_username`

Default	`mail_location`
Value	string
Advanced Setting; this should not normally be changed.

Overrides the obox username in storage.

Other Dovecot Settings

Mail Cache Settings

There is no need to add date.save to the various cache settings, as this data is always stored in dovecot.index file by obox.

`mail_fsync`

With obox, this setting is recommended to be set to never.

In obox installastions, this option only affects the local metacache operations. If a server crashes, the existing metacache is treated as potentially corrupted and isn't used, so never provides the best performance.

`mail_prefetch_count`

For obox, this setting affects reading multiple mails in parallel from object storage to local disk without waiting for previous reads to finish.

The downside is that each mail uses a file descriptor and disk space in mail_temp_dir.

For obox, a good value is likely between 10 to 100.

`mail_sort_max_read_count`

As a special case with obox when doing a SORT (ARRIVAL), the SORT will always return OK.

When it reaches the limit, it starts getting the received-timestamps from the time the object was saved. This is commonly the same as the received-timestamp, but not always.

Often this produces mostly the same result, especially in the INBOX.

`quota_over_script`

obox installations using quota_over_script must also have quota_over_flag_lazy_check enabled.

Otherwise the quota_over_flag checking may cause a race condition with metacache cleaning, which may end up losing folder names or mail flags within folders.

Dovecot Features

Compression (fs-compress)

In general, the maybe- versions of the compression algorithm should normally be used. For example:

Example configuration

obox_fs = fscache:512M:/var/cache/mails/%4Nu:compress:maybe-zstd:3:dictmap:proxy:dict-async:cassandra ; s3:https://ACCESSKEY:SECRET@s3.example.com/?bucket=mails&reason_header_max_length=200 ; refcounting-table:bucket-size=10000:bucket-cache=%h/buckets.cache:nlinks-limit=3:delete-timestamp=+10s:bucket-deleted-days=11:storage-objectid-prefix=%u/mails/

This decompresses mails if they were stored using zstd compression and falls back to reading the mails as plaintext.

Note

Note that these both work and don't have any practical difference, because fs-dictmap doesn't modify the object contents in any way:

obox_index_fs = compress:zstd:3:dictmap:proxy:dict-async:cassandra ; s3:https://ACCESSKEY:SECRET@s3.example.com/?bucket=mails&reason_header_max_length=200 ; diff-table:storage-passthrough-paths=full
obox_index_fs = dictmap:proxy:dict-async:cassandra ; compress:zstd:3:s3:https://ACCESSKEY:SECRET@s3.example.com/?bucket=mails&reason_header_max_length=200 ; diff-table:storage-passthrough-paths=full

Encryption

To encrypt mails in-rest you can use the fs-crypt plugin. Using the mail-crypt plugin is not recommended with obox.

It is not recommended to put the fs-crypt plugin before the fs-cache plugin for performance reasons. The plugin is intended for encrypting data at-rest in remote storage.

Configuration

First, one needs to generate a keypair. This can be done with OpenSSL. Dovecot 3.0 supports EDDSA with X25519, ECDSA and RSA. RSA is not recommended for performance and size reasons.

To generate a key, you can use

openssl genpkey -algorithm EC -pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:prime256v1 -out private.pem

openssl genpkey -algorithm X25519 -out private.pem

Once private key is generated, you can generate public key with

openssl pkey -in private.pem -out public.pem -pubout

WARNING: If you ever lose the private key, all data encrypted with it will be IRREVOCABLY lost. There is no way to recover mails without the private key.

To use the private key, configure

obox_fs = fscache:512M:/var/cache/mails/%4Nu:crypt:public_key_path=/etc/dovecot/public.pem:private_key_path=/etc/dovecot/private.pem:dictmap:proxy:dict-async:cassandra ; s3:https://ACCESSKEY:SECRET@s3.example.com/?bucket=mails&reason_header_max_length=200 ; refcounting-table:bucket-size=10000:bucket-cache=%h/buckets.cache:nlinks-limit=3:delete-timestamp=+10s:bucket-deleted-days=11:storage-objectid-prefix=%u/mails/

Lazy Expunge

It is highly recommended to use lazy_expunge plugin.

Note

If autoexpunging is done on the lazy_expunge folder, it must be larger than any potentially slow object storage operation. For example 15 minutes should be a rather safe minimum.

mail_plugins = $mail_plugins lazy_expunge

plugin {
  lazy_expunge = .EXPUNGED
}

namespace inbox {
  mailbox .EXPUNGED {
    autoexpunge = 7 days
  }
}

`lazy_expunge_only_last_instance`

This is recommended to be enabled for all installations.

Obox does reference counting in Cassandra (fs-dictmap), and this setting takes advantage of that setup.

`obox_track_copy_flags`

Lazy expunge allows reduction of Cassandra dictmap lookups by removing the lockdir setting and enabling the obox_track_copy_flags setting.

plugin {
  obox_track_copy_flags = yes
}

Mailbox Indexes

Dovecot mailbox indexes are required when using obox.

Virtual Plugin

When using the virtual plugin with obox, the virtual INDEX location must point to a directory named "virtual" in the user home directory. This way the virtual indexes are added to the obox root index bundles and will be preserved when user moves between backends or when metacache is cleaned.

location = virtual:/etc/dovecot/virtual:INDEX=~/virtual

The virtual indexes will be stored in the user root bundle.

It is possible to disable storing virtual indexes in the user root bundle using metacache_disable_secondary_indexes.

DNS (Domain Name System) lookups

Particularly with obox, Dovecot nodes need to do frequent DNS lookups. It is recommended that the underlying platform provides either a performant DNS service or deploys a local DNS cache on the Dovecot nodes.

Software that is known to work in this regard is PowerDNS as a service and nscd for local caching.

In environments where reaching a particular packets per second (PPS) rate for DNS or all packets combined, can lead to harsh throttling, it is recommended to select a local caching option, such as nscd. The same applies to certain virtualized environments, where the layer between virtual machine and hypervisor can drop packets under high load, leading to DNS timeouts. Additionally, Amazon AWS instances have been known to react adversely when an undocumented PPS rate is reached.

Optimizations

Disable Journaling (ext4)

In order to reduce I/O on the backends, it is recommended to disable the ext4 journal:

tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/vdb
e2fsck -f /dev/vdb

Disable atimes

Dovecot doesn't require atimes, so you can mount the filesystem with noatime:

mount -o defaults,discard,noatime /dev/vdb /metacache

Example: Disable journaling on ext4 volume ssd drive including setting discard, noatime, nodiratime (on CentOS 7)

$ umount /metacache
$ tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sdc1
tune2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)

$ fsck.ext4 -f /dev/sdc1
e2fsck 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/sdc1: 11/16777216 files (0.0% non-contiguous), 1068533/67108608 blocks

$ tune2fs -o discard /dev/sdc1
tune2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)

$ dumpe2fs /dev/sdc1 | grep discard
dumpe2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
Default mount options:    user_xattr acl discard

$ blkid /dev/sdc1
/dev/sdc1: UUID="5d20d432-3152-4ccf-98e3-94e7500cfd40" TYPE="ext4"

$ vi /etc/fstab
UUID=5d20d432-3152-4ccf-98e3-94e7500cfd40   /metacache      ext4    defaults,noatime,nodiratime     0 0
$ mount /metacache

$ mount | grep metacache
/dev/sdc1 on /metacache type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,seclabel)

Temporary Directory

To further reduce IOPs on the metacache volume when using the mail compression or mail crypt plugins, set the dovecot temp directory to a tmpfs volume:

mail_temp_dir = /dev/shm/

Maintenance

Obox Metacache Maintenance

It can be useful to flush unimportant changes in metacache every night when the system has idle capacity. This way if users are moved between backends, there's somewhat less work to do on the new backends since caches are more up-to-date. This can be done by running doveadm metacache flushall in a cronjob.

Compression

Index Objects

plugin {
  obox_index_fs = compress:maybe-<algorithm>:<level>:<...>
}

All of the object storage backends should be set up to compress index bundle objects. This commonly shrinks the indexes down to 20-30% of the original size (with zstd compression).

See this documentation for supported algorithms and the meaning of the level parameter: fs-compress plugin.

Email Objects

Email object (a/k/a message blob data) compression has generally been done with mail-compress plugin instead of via the fs-compress wrapper.

Example:

# NOTE: Using this has some trade-offs with obox installations, see below.
mail_plugins = $mail_plugins mail_compress
plugin {
  mail_compress_save = <algorithm>
  mail_compress_save_level = <level>
}

However, the problem with this with obox is that the mail files are written compressed to fscache. On one hand this increases the fscache's storage capacity, but on the other hand it requires Dovecot to always uncompress the files before accessing them.

This decompression uses a temporary file that is written to mail_temp_dir. By using the compress fs wrapper after fscache in obox_fs line, the mails are stored uncompressed in fscache, and reading the mails from there doesn't require writing to mail_temp_dir.

Compression status of email object data is auto-detected. Therefore, mail_compress_save may safely be added to a currently existing system; existing non-compressed mail objects will be identified correctly.

Dictmap

Using obox with Cassandra is done via the fs-dictmap wrapper.

Configuration information can be found at Dictmap.

fscache

Multiple fscache Directories

It's possible to split fscaches over multiple independent directories by including %variables in the path. This is typically done based on username hashing, e.g. /var/fscache/%8Nu would use 8 fscache directories. This is especially recommended with larger fscaches (>10 GB). The main benefit of split fscaches is that any cache trashing caused by a few users will be limited only to those users' fscaches.

For example if Dovecot is internally rebuilding caches for a single user, the 1 GB fscache could quickly be filled only with that one user's emails. But if the fscache is slit over multiple directories, the other directories won't be affected and may still contain useful cache for other users.

Limitations

The fscache plugin relies on filesystem usage information to be consistent. For example ZFS provides different information on block usage depending on when the information is queried, making fscache not work.

WARNING

ZFS support has been currently explicitly disabled.

Databases

Mechanisms

Formats

Extensions

Obox: Configuration ​

Core settings ​

Obox Configuration Options ​

fs_auth_cache_dict

fs_auth_request_max_retries

fs_auth_request_timeout

fs_server_backend

metacache_bg_root_uploads

metacache_close_delay

metacache_disable_bundle_list_cache

metacache_disable_secondary_indexes

metacache_forced_refresh_interval

metacache_index_merging

metacache_last_host_dict

metacache_max_grace

metacache_max_parallel_requests

metacache_max_space

metacache_merge_max_uid_renumbers

metacache_priority_weights

metacache_rescan_interval

metacache_roots

metacache_size_weights

metacache_socket_path

metacache_upload_interval

metacache_userdb

obox_allow_nonreproducible_uids

obox_autofix_storage

obox_avoid_cached_vsize

obox_disable_fast_copy

obox_dont_use_object_ids

obox_fetch_lost_mails_as_empty

obox_fs

obox_index_fs

obox_lost_mailbox_prefix

obox_max_parallel_copies

obox_max_parallel_deletes

obox_max_parallel_writes

obox_max_rescan_mail_count

obox_no_pop3_backend_uidls

obox_refresh_index_once_after

obox_rescan_mails_once_after

obox_size_missing_action

obox_track_copy_flags

obox_username

Other Dovecot Settings ​

Mail Cache Settings ​

mail_fsync ​

mail_prefetch_count ​

mail_sort_max_read_count ​

quota_over_script ​

Dovecot Features ​

Compression (fs-compress) ​

Example configuration ​

Encryption ​

Configuration ​

Lazy Expunge ​

lazy_expunge_only_last_instance ​

obox_track_copy_flags ​

Mailbox Indexes ​

Virtual Plugin ​

DNS (Domain Name System) lookups ​

Optimizations ​

Disable Journaling (ext4) ​

Disable atimes ​

Temporary Directory ​

Maintenance ​

Obox Metacache Maintenance ​

Compression ​

Index Objects ​

Email Objects ​

Dictmap ​

fscache ​

Multiple fscache Directories ​

Limitations ​

Obox: Configuration

Core settings

Obox Configuration Options

`fs_auth_cache_dict`

`fs_auth_request_max_retries`

`fs_auth_request_timeout`

`fs_server_backend`

`metacache_bg_root_uploads`

`metacache_close_delay`

`metacache_disable_bundle_list_cache`

`metacache_disable_secondary_indexes`

`metacache_forced_refresh_interval`

`metacache_index_merging`

`metacache_last_host_dict`

`metacache_max_grace`

`metacache_max_parallel_requests`

`metacache_max_space`

`metacache_merge_max_uid_renumbers`

`metacache_priority_weights`

`metacache_rescan_interval`

`metacache_roots`

`metacache_size_weights`

`metacache_socket_path`

`metacache_upload_interval`

`metacache_userdb`

`obox_allow_nonreproducible_uids`

`obox_autofix_storage`

`obox_avoid_cached_vsize`

`obox_disable_fast_copy`

`obox_dont_use_object_ids`

`obox_fetch_lost_mails_as_empty`

`obox_fs`

`obox_index_fs`

`obox_lost_mailbox_prefix`

`obox_max_parallel_copies`

`obox_max_parallel_deletes`

`obox_max_parallel_writes`

`obox_max_rescan_mail_count`

`obox_no_pop3_backend_uidls`

`obox_refresh_index_once_after`

`obox_rescan_mails_once_after`

`obox_size_missing_action`

`obox_track_copy_flags`

`obox_username`

Other Dovecot Settings

Mail Cache Settings

`mail_fsync`

`mail_prefetch_count`

`mail_sort_max_read_count`

`quota_over_script`

Dovecot Features

Compression (fs-compress)

Example configuration

Encryption

Configuration

Lazy Expunge

`lazy_expunge_only_last_instance`

`obox_track_copy_flags`

Mailbox Indexes

Virtual Plugin

DNS (Domain Name System) lookups

Optimizations

Disable Journaling (ext4)

Disable atimes

Temporary Directory

Maintenance

Obox Metacache Maintenance

Compression

Index Objects

Email Objects

Dictmap

fscache

Multiple fscache Directories

Limitations