IMAP Server Tester

TableOfContents

imaptest was originally written for stress testing [http://www.dovecot.org/ Dovecot] IMAP server. Its primary testing method is still stress testing, but now it also parses the incoming IMAP replies and complains if anything looks broken. imaptest works with any IMAP server.

Compiling

  1. Download and compile Dovecot v1.1 sources. imaptest uses its library functions. Dovecot doesn't have any external dependencies.
    1. Get the latest beta from http://dovecot.org/releases/1.1/beta/

    2. Compiling goes the usual way: ./configure && make (there's no need for make install)

  2. Download and compile http://dovecot.org/nightly/imaptest/imaptest-latest.tar.gz

    • ./configure --with-dovecot=../dovecot-1.1 && make

    • --with-dovecot=<path> parameter is used to specify path to Dovecot v1.1 sources' root directory.

  3. Either make install or run src/imaptest directly.

You may want to modify the default configuration from #defines in src/settings.h. This isn't required, but if you run imaptest often, this way you don't have to give the same parameters every time.

Mercurial repository

You can also get imaptest sources from [http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/ Mercurial] repository:

hg clone http://hg.dovecot.org/imaptest/

You can update it later with:

hg pull
hg update

You can see the latest changes using Mercurial's [http://hg.dovecot.org/imaptest/ web interface].

Running

The most important parameters (and their defaults) are:

Other useful parameters include:

Selecting what to test:

Append mbox

When saving messages, imaptest needs to get the messages from somewhere. mbox=path 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.

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

States

States can be specified using full or short names. You specify the probabilities in percents, so for example list=30 means that LIST command is executed with 30% probability.

The second probability is mainly useful for APPEND, where it controls how often to append multiple messages with MULTIAPPEND extension, so for example append=80,30 means that APPEND command is executed with 80% probability, and after each appended message there's a 30% chance of the APPEND command continuing.

You can disable all except LOGIN, LOGOUT and SELECT states by giving "-" parameter. For example: ./imaptest - select=0 append=100,0 logout=0 will do nothing but a LOGIN followed by APPENDs.

Name

Short name

Default%

Description

AUTHENTICATE

Auth

0

Authentication with AUTHENTICATE PLAIN command

LOGIN

Logi

100

Authentication with LOGIN command

LIST

List

50

LIST "" *

MCREATE

LCre

0

CREATE test/x/y mailboxes randomly. '/' separator is hardcoded currently.

MDELETE

LDel

0

DELETE test/x/y mailboxes randomly.

STATUS

Stat

50

STATUS (MESSAGES UNSEEN RECENT)

SELECT

Sele

100

SELECT mailbox (required for most states below)

FETCH

Fetc

100

FETCH n:m (random fields) where n:m is a range with random start for 100 messages (or all messages if mailbox has less than 100 messages). Randomly fetched fields are: UID, FLAGS, ENVELOPE, INTERNALDATE, BODY, BODYSTRUCTURE and BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (random headers)]. Random headers are: From, To, Cc, Subject, Message-ID, In-Reply-To, References, Delivered-To.

FETCH2

Fet2

100,30

FETCH n (BODY.PEEK[]) where n is a random message

SEARCH

Sear

0

SEARCH BODY hello

SORT

Sort

0

SORT (SUBJECT) US-ASCII for ALL or FLAGGED randomly

THREAD

Thre

0

THREAD REFERENCES US-ASCII ALL

COPY

Copy

33,5

COPY random number of messages

STORE

Stor

50

STORE <random-range> [+-]FLAGS[.SILENT] <random flags and keywords>. Only $Label1..5 are used as keywords. SILENT is used if checkpointing is disabled. \Deleted flags aren't set.

DELETE

Dele

100

STORE <random-range> +FLAGS[.SILENT] \Deleted

EXPUNGE

Expu

100

EXPUNGE

APPEND

Appe

100,5

APPEND messages to mailbox. MULTIAPPEND extension is used if possible. The counter shows number of APPEND commands, so with MULTIAPPEND it doesn't match the actual number of appended messages.

NOOP

Noop

0

NOOP command.

CHECK

Chec

0

CHECK command.

LOGOUT

Logo

100

LOGOUT command.

DISCONNECT

Disc

0

Disconnect without LOGOUT.

DELAY

Dela

0

1 second delay

CHECKPOINT!

ChkP

0

Use checkpoint parameter to change this. The counter shows number of client connections successfully checkpointed

State tracking

imaptest should catch the following errors:

Checkpointing works by letting all the pending commands finish. Then CHECK command is sent to all sessions. Once they're done, imaptest verifies that all clients' mailbox state looks exactly the same:

Examples

Basics:

./imaptest host=127.0.0.1 port=143 user=testuser password=testpass mbox=dovecot.mbox

Test IMAP server compliancy:

./imaptest checkpoint=1
./imaptest checkpoint=1 logout=0 expunge=10
./imaptest checkpoint=1 rawlog no_pipelining
./imaptest own_flags expunge=5 logout=1

If you want to do benchmarking, you can set it to run for specified amount of time, and you should also give random number generator the same seed every time:

./imaptest seed=123 secs=300

If you want to test/benchmark only the login+logout speed, use:

./imaptest - select=0

To create a lot of long-running clients doing STATUS and NOOPs:

./imaptest clients=100 - logout=0 status=50 noop=50 delay=100

Benchmarking how fast messages can be saved:

./imaptest - append=100,0 logout=0 msgs=10000000

To test copying messages:

./imaptest copybox=Trash

By default LOGIN command is used. If you want to try AUTHENTICATE PLAIN:

./imaptest auth=100

Server Status

IMAP servers that pass all tests (as of writing):