IMAP Server Tester

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ImapTest Configuration ​

ImapTest is controlled via command-line flags in the format <cmd>=<value>.

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Settings marked as boolean are enabled by providing any value, e.g., 1.

Parameters (Primary) ​

host ​

  • Default: 127.0.0.1

Host name/IP address where to connect.

mbox ​

  • Default: ~/mail/dovecot-crlf

Path to mbox file where to append messages from.

See below for how this is used.

mech ​

  • Default: login

Authentication mechanism to use. This supports anything Dovecot's SASL library does, for example plain, digest-md5 or scram-sha-1. The pass parameter must match what the mechanism expects.

pass ​

  • Default: <none>

Password to use for all users.

WARNING

There's currently no way to use different passwords for different users on the command line. Use userfile if you need that functionality.

port ​

  • Default: 143

Port to connect to.

user ​

  • Default: $USER

Username template.

You can use multiple random users and domains by giving %d in the template. So for example user%d returns user1..user100 and user%d@domain%d.org returns user1..100@domain1..100.org.

The upper limit for users can be set with the users parameter, and the upper limit for domains can be set with the domains parameter.

userfile ​

  • Default: <none>

Read usernames from given file, one user per line. It's also possible to give passwords for users in username:password format.

Other Parameters ​

box ​

  • Default: INBOX

Mailbox to use for testing.

clients ​

  • Default: 10

Number of simultaneous client connections to use.

copybox ​

  • Default: <none>

When testing COPY state, this specifies the destination mailbox.

disconnect_quit ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

If a client gets disconnected, quit. This is useful when debugging problems in the server.

domains ​

  • Default: 100

The upper limit for domain substitution in templates.

error_quit ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

If an error occurs, immediately quit.

master ​

  • Default: <none>

Use master user logins. Value is the masteruser to use.

msgs ​

  • Default: 30

Try to keep the mailbox size around this many messages.

no_pipelining ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

If set, don't send multiple commands at once to server.

qresync ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

If set, enable QRESYNC IMAP extension.

random_msg_size ​

  • Default: 0

If set, generates random garbage mails, of this size bytes, instead of using the mail messages supplied by the mbox parameter.

See below for how this is used.

rawlog ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

Write rawlog.* files for all connections containing their input and output.

results_output ​

  • Default: no (output to stdout)

If set, results are output to the filename provided.

secs ​

  • Default: <none>

Run ImapTest n seconds and then exit.

WARNING

Setting this to less than the time to run all scripts with tests=dir will lead to spurious test failures.

seed ​

  • Default: <none>

Seed to use for random generator. Setting this to some specific value makes repeated benchmarks a bit more reliable, because the used commands should be the same.

ssl ​

  • Default: <none>

If set, activate SSL/TLS.

If set to the value any-cert, allow invalid certificates.

stalled_disconnect_timeout ​

  • Default: 0 (disabled)

If set, disconnect after this many seconds in a stalled situation.

users ​

  • Default: 100

The upper limit for user substitution in templates.

Test Selection ​

State Probabilities ​

Format: <state>=<probability>[,<probability2>]

The state probabilities to use. See States for further information.

checkpoint ​

  • Default: <none>

Run a checkpoint every n seconds.

no_tracking ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

Don't track and complain about IMAP state. Makes it use less memory.

own_flags ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

Assigns an owner client for each flag and keyword. Complain if they're changed by another session.

own_msgs ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

Assigns an owner client for each message. Complain if flags for a message is changed by a non-owner session.

profile ​

  • Default: no

If set, use configuration from the profile file provided to run the tests.

See Profile page for additional information on this mode.

random ​

  • Default: no (boolean setting)

Switch randomly between states instead of consecutively going through them.

test ​

  • Default: <none>

Run scripted tests from a given directory instead of doing stress testing.

Append Mbox ​

When saving messages, ImapTest needs to get the messages from somewhere. mbox parameter specifies path to a file in mbox format that's used.

Messages are sequentially appended from there. Once ImapTest reaches the last message, it wraps back to appending the first message.

Currently ImapTest's state tracking expects that Message-IDs are unique within the mbox, otherwise it gives bogus errors. If you really want to avoid changing the Message-IDs, use no_tracking setting to disable state tracking.

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You can get a test mbox file from https://www.dovecot.org/tmp/dovecot-crlf. It's a 10MB file containing messages from Dovecot mailing list with unique Message-ID headers.