Cache file
==========

Cache file is used for storing immutable data. It supports several different
kinds of fields:

MAIL_CACHE_FIELD_FIXED_SIZE:
  The field size doesn't need to be stored in the cache file. It's always the
  same.

MAIL_CACHE_FIELD_BITMASK:
  A fixed size bitmask field. It's possible to add new bits by updating this
  field. All the added fields are ORed together.

MAIL_CACHE_FIELD_VARIABLE_SIZE:
  Variable sized binary data.

MAIL_CACHE_FIELD_STRING:
  Variable sized string.

MAIL_CACHE_FIELD_HEADER:
  Variable sized message header. The data begins with a 0-terminated 'uint32_t
  line_numbers[]'. The line number exists only for each header, header
  continuation lines in multiline headers don't get listed. After the line
  numbers comes the list of headers, including the "header-name: " prefix for
  each line, LFs and the TABs or spaces for continued lines.

The last 3 variable sized fields are treated identically by the cache file
code. Their main purpose is to make it easier for "dump cache file's contents"
programs ('src/util/idxview') to do their job.

Locking
-------

Because cache file is typically used in potentially long-running operations,
such as with IMAP command 'FETCH 1:* (BODY.PEEK[] ENVELOPE BODYSTRUCTURE)' it's
important that updating the cache file doesn't block out any other readers.
Also because the readers are often also writers (if something isn't cached,
it's added there), it's important that they don't block writers either.

Reading cache files requires no locking. Writing is done by first locking the
file, reserving some space to write to, and immediately after that unlocking
the file. This way the transaction can keep writing to the cache file as long
as it wants to without blocking other writers. When the transaction is
committed, the updated cache offsets are written to the transaction log which
makes them visible to other processes.

This also means that it's possible for two processes to write the same cached
fields twice to the cache file. Because the data written to the cache file are
really just cached data, the fields' contents are identical. Having the data
exist twice (or even more times) means wasting some disk space, but otherwise
it isn't a problem. The duplicates are dropped the next time the file is
compressed.

Cache decisions
---------------

Dovecot tries to be smart about what it keeps in the cache file. If the client
never fetches the cached data, it's just waste of disk space and disk I/O.

The caching decisions are:

MAIL_CACHE_DECISION_NO:
  This field isn't cached currently.

MAIL_CACHE_DECISION_TEMP:
  This field is cached for new mails.

MAIL_CACHE_DECISION_YES:
  This field is cached for all mails.

Normally Dovecot changes the decisions based on what fields are fetched and for
what messages. A specific decision can be forced by ORing it with
'MAIL_CACHE_DECISION_FORCED'.

'mail-cache-decisions.c' file contains the rules how Dovecot changes the
decisions. The following is copied from the file:

Users can be divided to three groups:

 1. Most users will use only a single IMAP client which caches everything
    locally. For these users it's quite pointless to do any kind of caching as
    it only wastes disk space. That might also mean more disk I/O.
 2. Some users use multiple IMAP clients which cache everything locally. These
    could benefit from caching until all clients have fetched the data. After
    that it's useless.
 3. Some clients don't do permanent local caching at all. For example Pine and
    webmails. These clients would benefit from caching everything. Some locally
    caching clients might also access some data from server again, such as when
    searching messages. They could benefit from caching only these fields.

After thinking about these a while, I figured out that people who care about
performance most will be using Dovecot optimized LDA anyway which updates the
indexes/cache immediately. In that case even the first user group would benefit
from caching the same way as second group. LDA reads the mail anyway, so it
might as well extract some information about it and store them into cache.

So, group 1. and 2. could be optimally implemented by keeping things cached
only for a while. I thought a week would be good. When cache file is
compressed, everything older than week will be dropped.

But how to figure out if user is in group 3? One quite easy rule would be to
see if client is accessing messages older than a week. But with only that rule
we might have already dropped useful cached data. It's not very nice if we have
to read and cache it twice.

Most locally caching clients always fetch new messages (all but body) when they
see them. They fetch them in ascending order. Noncaching clients might fetch
messages in pretty much any order, as they usually don't fetch everything they
can, only what's visible in screen. Some will use server side sorting/threading
which also makes messages to be fetched in random order. Second rule would then
be that if a session doesn't fetch messages in ascending order, the fetched
field type will be permanently cached.

So, we have three caching decisions:

 1. Don't cache: Clients have never wanted the field
 2. Cache temporarily: Clients want this only once
 3. Cache permanently: Clients want this more than once

Different mailboxes have different decisions. Different fields have different
decisions.

There are some problems, such as if a client accesses message older than a
week, we can't know if user just started using a new client which is just
filling its local cache for the first time. Or it might be a client user hasn't
just used for over a week. In these cases we shouldn't have marked the field to
be permanently cached. User might also switch clients from non-caching to
caching.

So we should re-evaluate our caching decisions from time to time. This is done
by checking the above rules constantly and marking when was the last time the
decision was right. If decision hasn't matched for two months, it's changed. I
picked two months because people go to at least one month vacations where they
might still be reading mails, but with different clients.

(This file was created from the wiki on 2012-07-03 04:42)
