On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 18:00 -0700, Don O'Neil wrote:
auth default: username_chars: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890.-_@& count: 5 passdb: driver: passwd passdb: driver: passwd-file args: /etc/virtual/%d/passwd userdb: driver: passwd userdb: driver: passwd-file args: /etc/virtual/%d/passwd
Where does passwd find the users? Are you using nss_ldap or something? Maybe the hangs are related to it? With newer Dovecot versions you can use blocking=yes setting, which does the passwd lookups in separate dovecot-auth worker processes, and if they use up all the processes it logs an error and returns "Internal error" to client instead of hanging.
Also if you have more virtual users than NSS users, it's faster to put the passwd-file passdb/userdb before the passwd, so that that the passwd-file lookups are done first.