[Dovecot] dovecot from debian lenny-backports does not accept connections

[Stan Hoeppner]

Joelly Alexander put forth on 5/14/2010 2:18 PM:
> hi,
> 
> dovecot from the debian lenny backports does not successfully accept
> incomming imap or imaps connections;
> when the client connect i can see the clients ip address in an
> imap-process but the client cannot succesfully connect and retries this
> several times where an new imap-process is bound until the maximum
> connections per client is reached;
> when the client is closed the imap-processes on the server stay opened,
> even when dovecot will be restarted or stopped - the processes needs to
> killed manually;

I'm running the 1.2.11 Lenny backport as well and I've never seen the
problem you describe.  I'm using a custom rolled 2.6.32.9 from kernel.org
source.  I'm not using iptables or selinux.  I've been troubleshooting some
performance issues likely related to mbox processing/indexing but I've had
nothing like the problem you describe.  I'm using Unix user accounts and PAM
authentication instead of virtual users, so there are substantial
differences between our setups.

However, I don't think Dovecot is the source of your problem.  From your
description, it seems likely that return packets aren't making it to the
clients.  This would explain why they keep reconnecting, and would also
explain why the imap process is never closed, i.e. the client doesn't think
it ever connected successfully, so it never sends a logout command.

Something is preventing your return packets from reaching the clients.
Check/disable your local iptables rules and any firewalls/routers between
you and the clients to see where the outbound traffic is being blocked.

Package: dovecot-imapd
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 1:1.2.11-1~bpo50+2
Priority: optional
Section: mail
Maintainer: Dovecot Maintainers <jaldhar-dovecot at debian.org>
Uncompressed Size: 1823k
Architecture: i386
Compressed Size: 1119k
Filename: pool/main/d/dovecot/dovecot-imapd_1.2.11-1~bpo50+2_i386.deb
MD5sum: fadfa84d8f07163ab7a2e9b32e39e056
Archive: lenny-backports, now

-- 
Stan