Some preamble information…
OS X 10.4.10 (all updates) Power Mac Dual G5, 2.0
Postfix with Dovecot SASL, Dovecot LDA, Dovecot imaps (openssl)
Mail clients
Apple Mail v 2.1 SquirrelMail v 1.4.10a Thunderbird v 2.0.0.6 Mulberry v 4.06
For various versions of Dovecot, from 0.9m up through 1.0.3 things
went well, no memorable big problems, with one exception: Mulberry v
4.0.8 would/will not work; i.e. it refuse(d) to connect saying it
could not start SSL to begin the connection. Dropped back to version
4.0.6.
I switched to version 1.1 alpha 2 (compile and configuration
information is attached at the end of this message)
- Started up Apple mail. Mail boxes disappeared in Apple Mail's
list, except for the main Inbox mail box.
Fixed by setting mailbox_list_index_disable = yes in the Dovecot.conf file, restarted both Dovecot and Mail, all the mailboxes
reappeared and worked correctly.
Started up Squirrel Mail using several different browsers. No
problems.Started up Thunderbird. No problems.
Started up Mulberry. It partially connected, but stopped with the
error saying that it had hit the limit for maximum connections.
Mail logs show:dovecot: imap-login: Maximum number of connections exceeded:
user=<username>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.1.1, lip=192.168.1.50, TLS
I tried increasing the various limits in the Dovecot.conf file up through a maximum limit of 2048 connections, to no avail. Mulberry
will initially connect to several of the mailboxes, but will stop
without getting all of them and will throw up the 'over the
connection limit' error and will then show you a dialog box that asks
you to log-in. Attempting to doing so returns a fatal error 54. I
have not tried Mulberry's version 4.0.8.
- Mail logs had this message suddenly begin appearing:
auth-worker(default): pam(username,192.168.1.1): pam_authenticate()
failed: Authentication failure
Fixed by completely commenting PAM authentication section out;
It was:
passdb pam {
# [blocking=yes] [session=yes] [setcred=yes]
# [cache_key=<key>] [<service name>]
#
... essentially a placeholder section, since everything inside is commented out # # }
now is:
#passdb pam {
#
#
... even the outer block is commented out
#
#}The error has now disappeared from the logs.
Dovecot was build using:
CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/openssl LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/lib -R/
usr/local/lib'
./configure
--with-ssl=openssl
--with-libiconv-prefix=/usr/local
Dovecot.conf:
# 1.1.alpha2: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf base_dir: /var/run/dovecot/ protocols: imaps ssl_listen: *:993 ssl_parameters_regenerate: 24 ssl_cipher_list: ALL:!LOW:!SSLv2 verbose_ssl: yes login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_user: Dovecot login_greeting: Hello, Dovecot is ready. valid_chroot_dirs: /var/mail/vmail/ mail_extra_groups: mail mail_location: maildir:/var/spool/vmail/%d/%n:INDEX=/var/spool/vmail/% d/%n:INBOX=/var/spool/vmail/%d/%n mail_debug: yes mailbox_list_index_disable: yes lock_method: flock imap_client_workarounds: delay-newmail auth default: mechanisms: plain login passdb: driver: passwd-file args: /etc/dovecot/passwd userdb: driver: passwd-file args: /etc/dovecot/users socket: type: listen client: path: /var/spool/postfix/private/auth mode: 432 user: postfix group: postfix master: path: /usr/local/var/run/dovecot/auth-master mode: 384 user: virtual group: virtual