[Dovecot] Aborted: Worker is buggy

[David Jonas]

I upgraded from 1.1 to 1.2 a couple months ago and now we are seeing this:

Aug 20 05:34:38 kelly dovecot: auth(default): auth workers: Auth request 
was queued for 7 seconds, 10 left in queue
...
Aug 20 05:34:38 kelly dovecot: auth(default): BUG: Worker sent reply 
with id 53, expected 54
Aug 20 05:34:38 kelly dovecot: auth(default): 
worker-server(xxx at example.com,dd.dd.dd.dd): Aborted: Worker is buggy
Aug 20 05:34:38 kelly dovecot: auth(default): 
passdb(xxx at example.com,dd.dd.dd.dd): Fallbacking to expired data from cache

When I attempt to restart dovecot there is one dovecot-auth process that 
won't die and keeps the server from starting. A simple 'killall 
dovecot-auth' takes care of it and the server is able to start. I'm not 
using anything exotic, dovecot config below.

The most curious fact is that we have identical servers running the same 
version of dovecot (1.2.3, happened under 1.2.1 as well) talking to the 
same MySQL database and both develop the problem at the same time. The 
database is under considerable stress at the time this occurs as the 
policyd tables are being cleaned. But this happens twice per hour and 
only sometimes does dovecot have trouble. I'm working to move the 
policyd database elsewhere, but of course this shouldn't happen in any case.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

David

# 1.2.3: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.ELsmp i686 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 
4 (Nahant Update 7)
protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s
ssl_cert_file: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.pem
ssl_key_file: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.pem
ssl_cipher_list: ALL:!LOW:!SSLv2
disable_plaintext_auth: no
login_dir: /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable(default): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
login_process_per_connection: no
verbose_proctitle: yes
first_valid_uid: 89
maildir_stat_dirs: yes
mail_executable(default): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/libexec/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugins(default): quota imap_quota
mail_plugins(imap): quota imap_quota
mail_plugins(pop3): quota
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/local/dovecot-1.2/lib/dovecot/pop3
pop3_uidl_format(default): %08Xu%08Xv
pop3_uidl_format(imap): %08Xu%08Xv
pop3_uidl_format(pop3): %f
pop3_client_workarounds(default):
pop3_client_workarounds(imap):
pop3_client_workarounds(pop3): outlook-no-nuls oe-ns-eoh
lda:
   postmaster_address: postmaster at no-ip.com
   hostname: no-ip.com
   mail_plugins: quota
   auth_socket_path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
auth default:
   mechanisms: login plain cram-md5
   cache_size: 5000
   cache_ttl: 1800
   cache_negative_ttl: 60
   user: nobody
   username_chars: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890.-_@
   username_translation: %@
   username_format: %TLu
   verbose: yes
   passdb:
     driver: sql
     args: /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf
   userdb:
     driver: prefetch
   userdb:
     driver: sql
     args: /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf
   socket:
     type: listen
     master:
       path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
       mode: 384
       user: vmail
       group: vmail
plugin:
   quota: dict:user:%LTd-%LTn:proxy::quota
   quote_rule: *:storage=100G
dict:
   quota: mysql:/etc/dovecot/dovecot-dict-sql.conf

## dovecot-sql.conf
driver = mysql
connect = host=192.168.dd.dd dbname=xxx user=xxx password=xxx
user_query=...
password_query=...

## dovecot-dict-sql.conf
connect = host=192.168.dd.dd dbname=xxx user=xxx password=xxx

map {
   pattern = priv/quota/storage
   table = quota2
   username_field = username
   value_field = bytes
}
map {
   pattern = priv/quota/messages
   table = quota2
   username_field = username
   value_field = messages
}