[Dovecot] Linux Bootup: Dovecot Failure

[Christopher Metter]

  Hi again,

sorry for late response, but I was busy doing other things.


Thanks Stan, your tip fingering ntp to be the culprit was right!


After reading different FAQs on ntp and reconfiguring /etc/ntpd.conf, I 
just purged ntp AND ntpdate (Don't ask me why both were installed), 
rebootet and everything was fine.
After just installing ntp and another reboot everything still was okay 
and now I dont have any ntpserver starting ;)
I assume the installation of both ntp and ntpdate was the problem.

Thank you for your help.



Greetings,
Christopher Metter

Am 24.10.2010 05:27, schrieb Stan Hoeppner:
> Christopher Metter put forth on 10/23/2010 4:02 PM:
>>   Hi there!
>>
>>
>> Im using a dovecot system in combination with postfix(with dovecot lda)
>> and ldap. Till today it ran well, but before switching to live, i did
>> some system updates and at the reboot following message occured:
>>
>> Starting IMAP/POP3 mail server: dovecoUnexpected first line<localhost:
>> timed out, nothing received>
> This is an NTP error--has nothing to do with Dovecot.  Apparently you're
> missing a loopback interface (127.0.0.1) or you have a goofy iptables
> setup breaking access to the LBI.  If simply the former, create a
> loopback interface and reboot.  Problem should be solved.  If the
> latter, find the iptables rule causing the problem and eject it.
>
>> (First it says: "Starting IMAP/POP3 mail server: dovecot ", but then
>> something fails and overrides the "t" of dovecot with "Unexpected.... ")
> Stuff is constantly overwritten on the physical console on Linux boxen
> these days.  This is "normal", although unsettling.  Parallel daemon
> startup is now the default on most (all?) distros today.  This allows
> faster startup, but it also causes errors to be reported "out of order".
>   In your case, ntpd was started but it took a few seconds to timeout.
> By that time many other daemons had started up.  It just happens that
> ntpd timed out right when Dovecot was loading, so it "appears" the error
> is Dovecot related, when in fact, it is not.
>
> You can eliminate this problem by disabling parallel startup.  This will
> fix the "out of order error reporting" but your machine will start up
> much more slowly, especially if have any daemons that always time out.
> ;)  I highly recommend you _not_ disable it.
>
> Oh, and btw, fix your ntp configuration to act as a client only, not
> both a client and server, and configure an external time source.  Mail
> servers, above all others but maybe DB servers, need the clock to be
> accurate.
>