[Dovecot] How to handle "Waiting for authentication process..."

[Timo Sirainen]

On 8.12.2010, at 8.59, A.L.E.C wrote:

> Sometimes, when dovecot authentication processes are busy, dovecot write
> reply "Waiting for authentication process to respond.." to client.
> Roundcube webmail do not understand it and invalidate user session.

That's an untagged reply. What kind of an authentication do you have anyway that causes this to be an actual problem?

> My question is what is a good practise to handle this situation by
> client software? One Roundcube user proposes to detect such response
> then wait a moment and try again. Is there any standard for this? How
> long should we wait?

That is not an authentication failure. It's sent only when the authentication itself isn't immediately available.

> More info here: http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1487450

I don't see an actual problem here. Just ignore all untagged replies until the client gets the tagged reply to the command it sent. It seems more like an IMAP client is freaking out when it sees an untagged reply that it\s not expecting.