Charles Marcus wrote the following on 5/23/2007 4:30 AM -0800:
This revised proposal for a Feature Request is the result of my desire
to implement quotas, but not have the attendant headaches that
inevitably accompany its implementation.
Ralf Hildebrandt wrote:
I have to face it, my users are retards:
Is there any other kind of user? ;)
<snip>
Thus I need a feature in dovecot that will tell them via email:
Level1: "You ALMOST exceeded your quota, you're at 90% now"
Level2: "You're very close to exceededin your quota, you're at 95%
now"
Level3: "Would you please clean up now? You're at 99% now"
What I'd *really* like to see implemented is something along the lines
outlined below - but of course, this will depend entirely on whether or
not Timo thinks it is doable - or desirable...
I'm thinking this would be best handled by the Quota plug-in - either
as part of the current one, or as a separate/different one...
*** 1. Have a 'special' user-specific folder (by special, I mean like
the Drafts, Sent, Templates folders) that dovecot controls. For
purposes of this FR, call it the 'over-quota' folder.
Question: could the .tmp folder be used for this? No sense in
reinventing the wheel if necessary... and then if someone migrated
from dovecot to something else, and messages were left in there from
an over-quota condition, that other solution would most likely just
move these to .new the first time it ran, right?
Or, possibly, could dovecot create a new one maybe, .oqt (for
over-quota), and store the queued messages there until the over-quota
condition was rectified?
Anyway, the main thing is, this folder should be essentially hidden
from the user so they do *not* have access to it, and should
temporarily hold messages that come in that are unable to be delivered
due to an over-quota condition.
Would seem to me that this would then require quota management over the
.oqt folder. What happens if someone is on an extended
vacation/leave-of-absence, or leaves the company or ISP and the account
is not removed? The .oqt would continue to grow indefinitely. I guess
one could implement a max .oqt folder size, but then that would
duplicate what quota is already doing anyway.
*** 2. Make dovecot aware of and use a special 'Quota Status' message
that it uses to inform a user that they are over quota. This message
should be able to be customized, with variables (like, for example, it
should list the messages that are currently being prevented from being
moved to the Inbox - including, optionally, the Subject, the sender,
date/time, attachments, size, etc - as well as provide general quota
information (ie, how close to or over quota they are, and how much
they'd need to delete or move to Local Folders to allow delivery of
all of the messages being held), and lastly, any custom information
the System Admin wanted to provide - like, maybe, specific
instructions for how to move messages to Local Folders, how to request
additional storage allowance, etc.
*** 3. When user is over quota, have LDA deliver to the folder
referenced above (# 1) - (yes, accept the message for final delivery
from the sending mta), and then update the Quota Status message and
move it to the Inbox.
Optionally, a bounce/notification could be generated to the sender,
informing them that their message is being 'held in queue' or
something to that effect, due to the recipient being over-quota.
*** 4. Once the user deletes enough mail to come back under quota,
dovecot would then move messages from the 'over-quota' folder to his
Inbox.
Ok, again, am willing to hear *valid* reasons how/why this is a
terrible idea... :)
I think a system that simply warns a user like Ralf outlined above seems
a better solution to me, and is more resilient and less likely to cause
admin headaches due to account maintenance oversights.
Just my 2 cents...
Bill
