Courier-IMAPD problem with fam(d)

[Kövesdán Gábor]

David Kelly wrote:

> /var/log/maillog is spayed full of the following message repeated  
> hundreds or thousands of times. No matter if the courier-imap port is  
> with or with out FAM.
>
> Jul 18 19:44:19 Grumpy imapd: Failed to create cache file:  
> maildirwatch (dkelly)
> Jul 18 19:44:19 Grumpy imapd: Error: Input/output error
> Jul 18 19:44:19 Grumpy imapd: Check for proper operation and  
> configuration
> Jul 18 19:44:19 Grumpy imapd: of the File Access Monitor daemon (famd).
>
> The only client used is Apple's Mail.app. This has been going on for  
> the past year. Sometimes in spite of the error log messages all seems  
> to be Good Enough. Then other times Mail.app can't hold a connection.
>
> Elsewhere found a suggestion that the following in my FreeBSD-hosted  
> Maildir would help, but has not:
>
> % cd Maildir
> % ln -s . .INBOX
> % ln -s . .INBOX.
>
> Just now when I deleted the above symbolic links, my mail downloaded  
> altho there is another of the above imapd error messages in maillog,  
> apparently one for each mailbox message downloaded.
>
> When ever Mail.app gets stuck it seems like all is needed is for the  
> mailbox directory to change somehow, or a message or two downloaded,  
> deleted or something, then Mail.app is perfectly happy.
>
> Bulk in maillog is nothing but a nuisance. Failed connection is  
> worse. How the heck is fam supposed to be configured? Or how the heck  
> can I get rid of it?

The mail/courier-imap port installs famd as a dependency, but You have 
to manually configure and start it. Take a look at 
/usr/local/etc/fam.conf. Anyway, this is a deficiency in the new 
versions of courier-imap. There isn't some kind of --without-fam 
configure options, the new versions require fam.
As for me, I had the same problem with it. My maillog was full of junk, 
but I didn't notice any kind of error. I could use imap well, but the 
junk in my log was very annoying, so I applied a little hack.
I did "make patch" and found the logging part of the source code and 
simply deleted those lines. Now, I had a well-working mail system and 
there isn't such junk in my maillog.

Cheers,

Gábor Kövesdán