[Dovecot] "ldap_result() failed: Can't contact LDAP server" log messages

[Timo Sirainen]

On Fri, 2007-03-09 at 11:57 +0000, Mike Brudenell wrote:
>    passdb:
>      driver: ldap
>      args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot-ldap-passdb.conf
>    userdb:
>      driver: ldap
>      args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot-ldap-userdb.conf

Is there a reason why these config files are separate? That causes it to
create two LDAP connections. If you used the same config file it would
create only one LDAP connection.

> The oddity is that even on a quiescent system (Dovecot started from  
> scratch, but no connections being made to it) we are seeing these  
> messages being logged, apparently every 5 minutes:
> 
> dovecot: Mar 09 11:09:44 Error: auth(default): LDAP: ldap_result()  
> failed: Can't contact LDAP server
..
> I'm wondering if Dovecot is trying to hold the connection open but,  
> after a timeout of 5 minutes of inactivity, the LDAP server is  
> closing it and causing Dovecot to log this message.

I guess it's that. But I think it's invisible to users? Dovecot should
reconnect to the server and retry the request instead of giving some
"internal authentication failure".

> Obviously I'd prefer not to have such worrying-sounding log entries  
> appearing.  (And if my guess is right then they're slightly  
> misleading: the LDAP server *can* be contacted!)

That's the error that LDAP library gives. I'm not sure if it would be a
good idea to just hide the error. Of course one possibility would be
that Dovecot itself disconnects the LDAP connection after a configured
amount of idle time.

Maybe you could also configure the LDAP server to not disconnect
Dovecot's connection?
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