I've figured this one out... Just wanted to get it into the dovecot
mailing list archive so that somebody in the future might find it if
they need it.
Running Dovecot on Mac OS X 10.4.11 and using LaunchDaemon to start.
Following a system crash, dovecot failed to restart with this in the
system log...
Feb 4 10:04:29 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: exited with exit code: 89
Feb 4 10:04:29 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: respawning too quickly!
throttling
Feb 4 10:04:29 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: 7 more failures without
living at least 60 seconds will cause job removal
Feb 4 10:04:29 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: will restart in 10 seconds
Feb 4 10:04:39 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: exited with exit code: 89
Feb 4 10:04:39 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: respawning too quickly!
throttling
Feb 4 10:04:39 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: 6 more failures without
living at least 60 seconds will cause job removal
Feb 4 10:04:39 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: will restart in 10 seconds
Feb 4 10:04:49 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: exited with exit code: 89
Feb 4 10:04:49 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: respawning too quickly!
throttling
Feb 4 10:04:49 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: 5 more failures without
living at least 60 seconds will cause job removal
Feb 4 10:04:49 G520X2 launchd: org.dovecot: will restart in 10 seconds
The problem turned out to be an old master.pid file (/usr/local/var/ run/dovecot/master.pid) that was left over from the crash.
Deleting the file allowed dovecot to restart.
Actually, dovecot told me what the problem was when I attempted to
start it from the command line as opposed to starting it with the
LaunchDaemon...
G520X2:root# /usr/local/sbin/dovecot -F Fatal: Dovecot is already running with PID 59 (read from /usr/local/ var/run/dovecot/master.pid)
Hope it helps someone else.
B. Bodger