[Dovecot] 1.0.5: many pop3-login processes?

[Alan Ferrency]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2007, Timo Sirainen wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 14:36 -0400, Alan Ferrency wrote:
> > On this particular server we have exactly 2 different users who log in
> > via POP, and they seem to be set up to log in automatically once every
> > 10 minutes.
> >
> > imap-login process count is reasonable: there are 11 processes running
> > and it doesn't seem to increase.  pop3-login is the issue.
> >
> > I notice in the logs, that the number of imap-login Login: lines matches
> > the number of Disconnect: lines in the log. For pop3-login, there are
> > 111 Login: lines and only 8 Disconnect: lines. However, there are no
> > pop3 processes currently running, as far as I can tell.


Looking further at the logs, I don't think I saw an actual problem
there, I was just misinterpreting the logs.

In any case, I was able to recreate the 128 pop3-login processes by
hammering the server with many simultaneous connection attempts even
without doing anything on those connections.

I expect this is the reality of the situation: some port-scanner or
something somewhere is occasionally hitting the server enough to
increase the pop3-login process count, but nothing ever uses them
after that.

The processes aren't doing anything or using many resources, it's just
annoying that they hang around forever without serving any purpose. Once
the process count goes up, do these login processes ever give up and
start dying off?

Thanks,

Alan