[Dovecot] dovecot immediately exits on Fedora 2
I "upgraded" my server running UW-IMAP on Fedora 1, to Fedora 2, which defaults to Dovecot. Unfortunately, the server refuses connecions from my client (Mozilla).
It seems that Dovecot immediately exits: ps aux|grep dovecot shows nothing. Also, if I manually start up dovecot, it immediately exits, with no messages. (It does at least parse the config file, since tweaking that gives me errors.)
What is surprising is that I haven't been able to "Google" to find anone else reporting someting similar, so I'm wonderring what makes my system unique.
I tried downloading, compiling and running the current UW-imap. Mozilla is able to connect to it, and ask for a password, but rejects the login. Curious that we're getting two such very different failure modes.
Help would be most appreciated; for now neither I nor others who use my imap server can access our mail (except by directly viewing the /var/spool/mail file).
--Per Bothnerper@bothner.com http://per.bothner.com/
I'm new to Dovecot, but I'll have a go at answering since I haven't seen any other answers yet and I have been using dovecot 0.99.10-4 on Fedora 1.
] I "upgraded" my server running UW-IMAP on Fedora 1, ] to Fedora 2, which defaults to Dovecot. Unfortunately, ] the server refuses connecions from my client (Mozilla).
"Connection refused" is to be expected if dovecot isn't running.
] It seems that Dovecot immediately exits: ] ps aux|grep dovecot shows nothing. ] Also, if I manually start up dovecot, it immediately ] exits, with no messages. (It does at least parse the ] config file, since tweaking that gives me errors.)
I suggest tail /var/log/maillog as the place to look for errors and messages from dovecot.
] What is surprising is that I haven't been able to "Google" ] to find anone else reporting someting similar, so I'm ] wonderring what makes my system unique.
A problem I've suffered from (and seen others with Google) is with SSL support, seeding the pseudo random number generator. The symptom is that dovecot totally crashes (and needs to be restarted) at various times (probably when someone tries SSL).
I have turned SSL off with ssl_disable = yes in /etc/dovecot.conf. Since then dovecot hasn't crashed.
David Keegel djk@cybersource.com.au http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/ Cybersource P/L: Linux/Unix Systems Administration Consulting/Contracting
David Keegel wrote:
I suggest tail /var/log/maillog as the place to look for errors and messages from dovecot.
Yes, while I was debugging uw-imap I made use of that. And looking through the maillog I found messages like:
May 25 16:03:42 bothner imap-login: Can't load private key file /usr/share/ssl/private/dovecot.pem: error:0B080074:x509 certificate routines:X509_check_private_key:key values mismatch
So that's a pretty strong hint what to look at ...
Thanks for the hint - which in retrospect I should have been able to figure out myself. Ah well.
I was able to debug uw-imap (by inserting extra syslog calls), and determined the problem was a missing configuration file for PAM (pluggable authentical modules). I now have uw-imap working, so getting dovecot working is no longer urgent. Of course I prefer to use the "vendor-supported" packages, but I think I might stick with UW-imap until it is time for Fedora 3 - there doesn't seem to be any reason to fiddle with things until then.
--Per Bothnerper@bothner.com http://per.bothner.com/
participants (2)
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David Keegel
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Per Bothner