Alright then. I took Charles advice, installed version 1.0.10, and created a new config from scratch.
Dovecot is still hanging up randomly. When I starts to hang (stop allowing users to login) I get errors like this in syslog
Feb 14 13:44:59 mail dovecot: pop3-login: Can't connect to auth server at default: Resource temporarily unavailable Feb 14 13:45:00 mail dovecot: imap-login: Can't connect to auth server at default: Resource temporarily unavailable
When the problem occurs I also get a few extra dovecot-auth processes that won't die. When I do killall -9 dovecot-auth, dovecot begins responding again and allowing users to access their mail.
I saw some similar problems with older versions in the list archives but no solutions. One was for an Ubuntu LTS system, which is what my server is. I am guessing then, that the problem may have to do with pam, or how dovecot is connecting to it. I saw some one mentioning a possible race condition, but no solution.
Does any one have any hints or suggestions.
Thanks. Relevant config info below
matthew
root@molly-sl:~# /opt/local/sbin/dovecot -n # 1.0.10: /opt/local/etc/dovecot.conf protocols: pop3s imaps ssl_cert_file: /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem ssl_key_file: /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key login_dir: /opt/local/var/run/dovecot/login login_executable(default): /opt/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_executable(imap): /opt/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_executable(pop3): /opt/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login mail_location: maildir:/var/mail/%u mail_executable(default): /opt/local/libexec/dovecot/imap mail_executable(imap): /opt/local/libexec/dovecot/imap mail_executable(pop3): /opt/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3 mail_plugin_dir(default): /opt/local/lib/dovecot/imap mail_plugin_dir(imap): /opt/local/lib/dovecot/imap mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /opt/local/lib/dovecot/pop3 pop3_uidl_format(default): pop3_uidl_format(imap): pop3_uidl_format(pop3): %v-%u auth default: passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd
root@molly-sl:~# /opt/local/sbin/dovecot --version 1.0.10