Debian Bug report logs - #1000322
locking issues can lead to complete mail spool destruction

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Antoine Beaupre <anarcat@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: locking issues can lead to complete mail spool destruction

Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2021 11:02:19 -0500

Package: syncmaildir
Version: 1.3.0-1
Severity: grave
Tags: upstream
Forwarded: https://github.com/gares/syncmaildir/issues/18

I have experienced, twice, a situation in which SMD has attempted to
destroy my entire mail spool. In both cases I noticed before it
managed to delete it all, but it did manage to do a lot of damage
which took a long time to recover from.

The details of the crashes are in those two blog posts:

https://anarc.at/blog/2021-03-22-email-crash/
https://anarc.at/blog/2021-06-29-another-mail-crash/

I have also filed the following upstream bug in which they confirm the
issue:

https://github.com/gares/syncmaildir/issues/18

Since then, the upstream project has been archived and basically
abandoned. I would strongly recommend against shipping SMD in Debian
stable in the forseeable future, unless serious work is started to
improve its reliability and stability.

I have deliberately marked this bug as "grave" for that reason. I have
also found subtle mailbox corruption issues when syncing against a
Dovecot server, which are not directly related to this bug (and
therefore could warrant a separate one), but I figured one would be
good enough to start with. Details of that corruption (and recovery)
are in:

https://anarc.at/blog/2021-11-21-one-last-smd-crash/

I discuss alternatives in:

https://anarc.at/blog/2021-11-21-mbsync-vs-offlineimap/

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.1
  APT prefers stable-security
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-9-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=fr_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages syncmaildir depends on:
ii  libc6           2.31-13+deb11u2
ii  libglib2.0-0    2.66.8-1
ii  lua5.1          5.1.5-8.1+b3
ii  openssh-client  1:8.4p1-5
ii  xdelta          1.1.3-9.3

syncmaildir recommends no packages.

syncmaildir suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

Message #10 received at 1000322-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org>

To: 685001-done@bugs.debian.org,685265-done@bugs.debian.org,808139-done@bugs.debian.org,893998-done@bugs.debian.org,894550-done@bugs.debian.org,991213-done@bugs.debian.org,993020-done@bugs.debian.org,1000322-done@bugs.debian.org,1078828-done@bugs.debian.org,995531-done@bugs.debian.org,

Cc: syncmaildir@packages.debian.org

Subject: Bug#1082604: Removed package(s) from unstable

Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2024 18:06:34 +0000

Version: 1.3.0-2+rm

Dear submitter,

as the package syncmaildir has just been removed from the Debian archive
unstable we hereby close the associated bug reports.  We are sorry
that we couldn't deal with your issue properly.

For details on the removal, please see https://bugs.debian.org/1082604

The version of this package that was in Debian prior to this removal
can still be found using https://snapshot.debian.org/.

Please note that the changes have been done on the master archive and
will not propagate to any mirrors until the next dinstall run at the
earliest.

This message was generated automatically; if you believe that there is
a problem with it please contact the archive administrators by mailing
ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Thorsten Alteholz (the ftpmaster behind the curtain)

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