Mailbox Synchronization

The idea behind synchronization is to find out what changes other sessions have done to the mailbox and to finalize our own changes to the mailbox.

For example if you expunge a message in a transaction and commit it, the commit will only write a "please expunge UID n" record to Dovecot's transaction log file. The message still exists on the disk. The next time Dovecot syncs the mailbox (either the session that wrote the record or another one), it goes through all the non-synchronized records in transaction log and applies the requested changes to the backend mailbox. Syncing can be a bit heavyweight operation, so it's possible to commit multiple transactions and perform a single sync for all of them. Dovecot attempts to do this with IMAP protocol when pipelining commands.

The other important job of syncing is to refresh mailbox's state:

• Finding out about external modifications to mailbox (e.g. a new mail delivered to Maildir/new/).

• Updating in-memory view of what messages exist, what their flags are, etc.

When a mailbox is opened, its state starts with what index files contain at the time. Since the backend mailbox may have already changed, and syncing an up-to-date mailbox is usually really cheap, there isn't much point in not syncing mailbox immediately after opening. The mailbox state stays the same until you synchronize the mailbox again. Without syncing no new messages show up and no messages get expunged.

Typically you would sync the mailbox

• after committing a transaction that modifies backend mailbox in any way (instead of just internal index data), such as after changing message flags or expunging a message.

• whenever you want to find out if there are any changes. With IMAP protocol this is done every time after running a command.

Initializing

mailbox_sync_init() initializes syncing.

Sync Flags: Effort

There are some flags that control how much effort is spent on syncing:

MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_FAST

This can be given when you're ready for mailbox to be refreshed, but don't care much if it actually is or not. When this flag is set, Dovecot still notices all internal changes, but external changes are checked only once every few seconds or so.

MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_FULL_READ

This is mainly useful with mboxes.

If mbox_dirty_syncs=yes and a new mail gets appended to mbox by an external program, Dovecot assumes that the only change was the added mail, even though the program may have also modified existing messages' flags by rewriting Status: headers. If mbox_very_dirty_syncs=no, these changes are noticed after the next time mailbox is opened. So when this flag is enabled, it means Dovecot should try harder to find out if there were any external unexpected changes. It's currently used only with IMAP SELECT and CHECK commands and POP3 startup. Probably unnecessary elsewhere.

MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_FULL_WRITE

This is again mainly useful with mboxes.

If mbox_lazy_writes=no, Dovecot delays writing flag changes to mbox file until mailbox is closed or IMAP CHECK command is issued. Using this elsewhere is probably unnecessary, except as an optimization if mailbox is in any case synced just before closing it, you might as well give this flag to it to avoid double-syncing with mbox.

MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_FORCE_RESYNC

This is used to force resyncing indexes. The only time this should be done is when manually triggered by administrator.

Sync Flags: Other

Then there are also other syncing flags:

MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_NO_EXPUNGES

No expunged messages are removed from the in-memory mailbox view. Their removal is delayed until syncing is done without this flag. Attempting to access the expunged messages may or may not work, depending on what information is accessed and what storage backend is used.

MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_FIX_INCONSISTENT

Normally when the internal mailbox state can't be consistently updated (typically due to index file corruption), the syncing fails. When this flag is set, it means that the caller doesn't care about mailbox's previous state and just wants to get it accessible again. Typically this is used when the mailbox is being opened, but not afterwards.

MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_EXPUNGE

This is mainly intended for virtual plugin with IMAP protocol. You probably shouldn't use it.

Reading Changes

While mailbox_sync_next() returns TRUE, it fills out sync record:

Record	Description
seq1 seq2	Message sequence numbers that were affected.
type	Expunge, flag change or modseq change.

Expunge records don't immediately change the view's sequence numbers. After seeing an expunge record you can still fetch the expunged messages' flags and possibly other information. Only after syncing is deinitialized, the sequences change.

Message flag change records don't actually show what the changes were. You can find the new flags by fetching them (mail_get_flags(), etc.). They're available immediately. You'll need to create a mailbox transaction and a mail for that. For example:

sync_ctx = mailbox_sync_init(box, flags);
trans = mailbox_transaction_begin(box, 0);
mail = mail_alloc(trans, MAIL_FETCH_FLAGS, 0);

If you don't actually care about sync records, you don't necessarily have to even call mailbox_sync_next(). In that case it's actually easiest to perform the whole sync using a one-step mailbox_sync() function. This function also sets MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_FIX_INCONSISTENT flag automatically.

Deinitializing

mailbox_sync_deinit() finalizes the syncing. If any errors occurred during sync, it'll return -1.

If MAILBOX_SYNC_FLAG_NO_EXPUNGES was used and some expunges were actually delayed, status_r->sync_delayed_expunges is set to TRUE.

Implementing Sync for a Storage Backend

WARNING

Talk about mail_index_sync_*() and how to change stuff and how to update internal state.