[Dovecot] Server power loss and "Dovecot is already running with PID xxx"

[Dan Horák]

Pekka Savola píše v Po 04. 08. 2008 v 12:40 +0300:
> On Mon, 4 Aug 2008, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> >> It doesn't seem to be that the current logic is working; there is no 
> >> program with the PID that's in master.pid, and dovecot (1.0.7 + RHEL 
> >> patches) refuses to start.
> >> 
> >> root: /root$ /sbin/service dovecot start
> >> Starting Dovecot Imap: Error: Dovecot is already running with PID 2746 
> >> (read from /var/run/dovecot/master.pid)
> >> Fatal: Invalid configuration in /etc/dovecot.conf
> >>                                                           [FAILED]
> >> root: /root$ more /var/run/dovecot/master.pid
> >> 2746
> >> root: /root$ ps auxw | grep 2746
> >> root     31714  0.0  0.1   4116   584 pts/1    R+   20:19   0:00 grep 2746
> >
> > SELinux perhaps? It checks this by kill()ing the process and seeing if it 
> > returns ESRCH. If not, it assumes the process exists. If you've SELinux 
> > perhaps it always return EPERM to the call..
> 
> 'getenforce' says disabled, so no.  This is pretty strange -- I looked 
> at the code and basically duplicated the logic there and could not 
> reproduce this problem with a smaller piece of code.  And it doesn't 
> seem to appear always in any case -- I killed dovecot with KILL signal 
> (leaving the PID file behind), and after that it started up without 
> problems.  Unless you have other ideas what to look for, I guess this 
> will remain a mystery..
> 

There is a not-so-prefect init script installed for dovecot in RHEL, try
using the one from Fedora
(http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewcvs/rpms/dovecot/devel/dovecot.init?rev=1.6&view=auto). A new init script will be added in RHEL 5.3.


		Dan

-- 
Fedora and Red Hat package maintainer