[Dovecot] dovecot dead

[tomas at tuxteam.de]

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On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 10:59:43AM +0800, Allen Sim wrote:
> Hi,
> I am a new linux user.I jz setting up a mail server.Downloaded &
> Configured the components:CentOS,OpenLDAP,pam,dovecotMailServer,s
> endmial,squireelmail etc....
> But wehn i want to check whether it works or not, so i open up my
> clientmail, wchi is Netscape 7.2. in Edit > Mail & Newsgroups Account
> Setting > server setting... i had put the ip address for the
> machine... but error pop out: Could not connect to mail server
> 10.XX.XX.XXX;the connection was refused. what's wrong wth it???
> 
> how to check wthere the mail server work?

Uh, oh. So many possibilities :-)

(0) Is your client running on the same box as the server?
  If yes, you might use 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1' as the server's
  address (without the quotes). This eliminates one variable.

(1) Is the IMAP server running?
  On a console (on the server box), you can try the following:

  ps wwaux | grep dovecot

  You should see something like this:

  | root      4465  0.0  0.6   1948   856 ?        Ss   Mar14   0:00 /usr/sbin/dovecot
  | root      4466  0.0  1.5   8708  2084 ?        S    Mar14   0:00 dovecot-auth
  | dovecot  15609  0.0  1.1   3380  1520 ?        S    Mar20   0:00 imap-login
  | dovecot  15621  0.0  1.1   3376  1520 ?        S    Mar20   0:00 imap-login
  | dovecot  15654  0.0  1.1   3376  1520 ?        S    Mar20   0:00 imap-login
  | tomas    29283  0.0  0.5   2888   744 pts/0    S+   05:45   0:00 grep dovecot

  That is, several processes belonging to dovecot (maybe on your distro
  the dovecot user isn't called 'dovecot', but I'd expect you to see at
  least /usr/sbin/dovecot and dovecot-auth)
  A line like the last one doesn't count -- you are seeing yourself ;-)

(2) Is the IMAP server accepting connections?
  On the same console, try

  netstat -atlp. You should see a line like this:

  | Active Internet connections (servers and established)
  | Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address State
  | tcp        0      0 *:imaps                 *:*     LISTEN
  [more lines deleted]

  (with 'imaps' if you are using secure IMAP, just 'imap' when not).

If (1) fails, your server is not running. Try Asheesh's suggestion
(/etc/init.d/dovecot start, or whatever your OS has for starting
services). If (2) fails, you'll have to go through your server's config.

Come back for the next step. It's really like a big text adventure game
;-)

Regards
- -- tomás
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