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Dovecot's index files
=====================

Dovecot's index files consist of three different files:

 * <Main index file> [Design.Indexes.MainIndex.txt] ('dovecot.index')
 * <Transaction log> [Design.Indexes.TransactionLog.txt] ('dovecot.index.log'
   and 'dovecot.index.log.2')
 * <Cache file> [Design.Indexes.Cache.txt] ('dovecot.index.cache')

See <IndexFiles.txt> for more generic information about what they contain and
why.

The index files can be accessed using <mail-index.h API>
[Design.Indexes.MailIndexApi.txt].

Locking
-------

The index files are designed so that readers cannot block a writer, and write
locks are always short enough not to cause other processes to wait too long.
Dovecot v0.99's index files didn't do this, and it was common to get lock
timeouts when using multiple connections to the same large mailbox.

The main index file is the only file which has read locks. They can however
block the writer only for two seconds (and even this could be changed to not
block at all). The writes are locked only for the duration of the mailbox
synchronization.

Transaction logs don't require read locks. The writing is locked for the
duration of the mailbox synchronization, and also for single transaction
appends.

Cache files doesn't require read locks. They're locked for writing only for the
duration of allocating space inside the file. The actual writing inside the
allocated space is done without any locks being held.

In future these could be improved even further. For example there's no need to
keep any index files locked while synchronizing, as long the mailbox backend
takes care of the locking issues. Also writing to transaction log could work in
a similar way to cache files: Lock, allocate space, unlock, write.

Lockless integers
-----------------

Dovecot uses several different techniques to allow reading files without
locking them. One of them uses fields in a "lockless integer" format. Initially
these fields have "unset" value. They can be set to a wanted value in range
0..2^28 (with 32bit fields) once, but they cannot be changed. It would be
possible to set them back to "unset", but setting them the second time isn't
safe anymore, so Dovecot never does this.

The lockless integers work by allocating one bit from each byte of the value to
"this value is set" flag. The reader then verifies that the flag is set for the
value's all bytes. If all of them aren't set, the value is still "unset".
Dovecot uses the highest bit for this flag. So for example:

 * 0x00000000: The value is unset
 * 0xFFFF7FFF: The value is unset, because one of the bytes didn't have the
   highest bit set
 * 0xFFFFFFFF: The value is 2^28-1
 * 0x80808080: The value is 0
 * 0x80808180: The value is 0x80

Dovecot contains 'mail_index_uint32_to_offset()' and
'mail_index_offset_to_uint32()' functions to translate values between integers
and lockless integers. The "unset" value is returned as 0, so it's not possible
to differentiate between "unset" and "set" 0 values.

(This file was created from the wiki on 2019-06-19 12:42)