[Dovecot] dovecot rejecting auth after working a few times

[Matthew Thorley]

Greetings all, I've got a dovecot server up that works just fine for a
few minutes, and then suddenly won't authenticate users. On top of it,
it keeps spawning dovecot-auth processes that won't go away. If any
one has seen this or knows what's causing it I sure could use some
help.

Thanks much.

I've included my relevant config info below
-- 
Matthew Thorley


dovecot --version
1.0.beta3


 grep -v \# /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf | grep -vE "^$"
protocols = imaps pop3s
listen = *
ssl_disable = no
ssl_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
ssl_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
disable_plaintext_auth = no
log_timestamp = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S "
login_user = dovecot
mail_extra_groups = mail
mail_debug = yes
default_mail_env = maildir:/var/mail/%u
protocol imap {
}

protocol pop3 {

  pop3_uidl_format = %v-%u
}
auth_verbose =yes
auth_debug = yes
auth_debug_passwords = yes
auth_worker_max_count = 10
auth default {
  mechanisms = plain
  passdb pam {
  }
  userdb passwd {
  }
  user = root
}
plugin {
}