F14: Encfs/procmail problem setting st_atime unexpectedly

Corinna Vinschen vinschen at redhat.com
Thu Dec 30 13:15:56 UTC 2010


On Dec 30 10:44, JB wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I can confirm similar test results for mailx.
> I have tested it on Fedora 14.
> [...]
> Conclusion:
> On Linux, with file systems mounted with default mount option 'relatime',
> on an encrypted file system (encfs) mailx deviates from conventional rules of
> file times modifications.
> This will cause some applications (like mutt mail client) that rely on mbox's
> file times attributes to not work properly.

Interesting to see that not only procmail is affected.

> Corinna,
> you have Red Hat's e-mail address, but I do not know if you are a dev or
> a user.

As far as Fedora is concerned I'm just a user.

> We have an option to file Fedora Bugzilla bugs for procmail and mailx and let
> the package maintainers take care of it.

Today I built procmail from source to have a look.  There's a
Fedora-specific patch procmail-3.22-rhconfig.patch, which contains this
hunk:

  @@ -91,14 +92,14 @@
	  restriction does not apply to the /etc/procmailrc and
	  /etc/procmailrcs files) */

  -#define NO_NFS_ATIME_HACK    /* uncomment if you're definitely not using
  +/*#define NO_NFS_ATIME_HACK    /* uncomment if you're definitely not using
				     NFS mounted filesystems and can't afford
	  procmail to sleep for 1 sec. before writing to an empty regular
	  mailbox.  This lets programs correctly judge whether there is unread
	  mail present.  procmail automatically suppresses this when it isn't
	  needed or under heavy load. */
  [...]

So what this patch does is to disable the NFS hack for no apparent
reason.  This also breaks MBOX files on encfs.  I built my own procmail
with the NFS atime hack re-enabled and it fixes my problem.

> What is your suggestion ?

As for procmail, I generated a bugzilla entry
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=666383

As for mailx, it doesn't have any Fedora-specific patch which might
contribute to this problem so I'm not sure.  This may be worth to be
reported upstream, I guess.


Corinna


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