[Dovecot] Rogue child imap processes when using Mac imap clients
hi all-
I am currently running dovecot 0.99.10p2 on OpenBSD-3.4-snapshot. It has been very stable, but I have recently noticed that I am having problems when checking IMAP-SSL mail with Mac OS X clients. There are not problems using Mozilla or Outlook on Windows, but Mac clients (Thunderbird, Mozilla, Mail.app) all exhibit the same behavior - they can check and send mail, but I end up with a single, rogue child imap process on the server that pins the cpu that i have to 'kill -9' to clear out.
Is this a Mac problem or a Dovecot problem? I'm not even sure what to look for in the logs...
Thanks, Darren David
On Dec 8, 2003, at 7:28 PM, darren david wrote:
I am currently running dovecot 0.99.10p2 on OpenBSD-3.4-snapshot. It has been very stable, but I have recently noticed that I am having problems when checking IMAP-SSL mail with Mac OS X clients. There are not problems using Mozilla or Outlook on Windows, but Mac clients (Thunderbird, Mozilla, Mail.app) all exhibit the same behavior - they can check and send mail, but I end up with a single, rogue child imap process on the server that pins the cpu that i have to 'kill -9' to clear out.
Is this a Mac problem or a Dovecot problem? I'm not even sure what to look for in the logs...
Hmm. Check with ktrace what the imap process is doing and send the log to me? (I'm not exactly sure how ktrace worked, it was a bit weird.) And maybe check with gdb too where it's stuck at (gdb /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap <pid> and "bt" command). Or is it imap process or imap-login process?
Anyway, I haven't noticed problems with Mail.app.
- Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi (20031209 00:29):
Anyway, I haven't noticed problems with Mail.app.
Nor did I, although I check a big Mail directory. I just hear the IMAP server's disk grind for some seconds (I suspect it goes through every mailbox to update the index).
My only concern with Mail.app is that, by default, it displays every mailbox existing, instead of playing with subscriptions, but it is perhaps only a matter of reading the docs!
On 2003-12-08, Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi wrote:
On Dec 8, 2003, at 7:28 PM, darren david wrote:
I am currently running dovecot 0.99.10p2 on OpenBSD-3.4-snapshot. It has been very stable, but I have recently noticed that I am having problems when checking IMAP-SSL mail with Mac OS X clients. There are not problems using Mozilla or Outlook on Windows, but Mac clients (Thunderbird, Mozilla, Mail.app) all exhibit the same behavior - they can check and send mail, but I end up with a single, rogue child imap process on the server that pins the cpu that i have to 'kill -9' to clear out.
Is this a Mac problem or a Dovecot problem? I'm not even sure what to look for in the logs...
Hmm. Check with ktrace what the imap process is doing and send the log to me? (I'm not exactly sure how ktrace worked, it was a bit weird.) And maybe check with gdb too where it's stuck at (gdb /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap <pid> and "bt" command). Or is it imap process or imap-login process?
Got one (although I'm not sure if this comes from handling a Mac mail reader):
45793 dovecot CALL sendto(0x9,0x11ffac40,0x45,0,0,0) 45793 dovecot GIO fd 9 wrote 69 bytes "<19>Dec 10 22:37:15 dovecot: socketpair() failed: Too many open files" 45793 dovecot RET sendto 69/0x45 45793 dovecot CALL socketpair(0x1,0x1,0,0x11ffb9d0) 45793 dovecot RET socketpair -1 errno 24 Too many open files 45793 dovecot CALL gettimeofday(0x11ffabf0,0) 45793 dovecot RET gettimeofday 0
This is what's happening on an alpha/freebsd, in a tight loop.
(FreeBSD s2.enemy.org 4.9-STABLE FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE #1: Mon Nov 24 10:37:25 CET 2003 root@s2.enemy.org:/u/src/sys/compile/S2 alpha)
Unfortunately, I couldn't extract a gdb backtrace. Perhaps you can work with that until I can get one (should be another 2-4 days) (-:
Anyway, I haven't noticed problems with Mail.app.
Thanks a lot,
Andreas Fuchs, asf@boinkor.net, asf@jabber.at, antifuchs
hey all-
just a ping to see if this ssue has been resolved. it's still popping up for me. Also wondering whose the owner of the OpenBSD port and if we'll be seeing an updated version anytime soon? we're still on 0.99.10.2 as far as i can tell...
cheers, darren
Andreas Fuchs wrote:
On 2003-12-08, Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi wrote:
On Dec 8, 2003, at 7:28 PM, darren david wrote:
I am currently running dovecot 0.99.10p2 on OpenBSD-3.4-snapshot. It has been very stable, but I have recently noticed that I am having problems when checking IMAP-SSL mail with Mac OS X clients. There are not problems using Mozilla or Outlook on Windows, but Mac clients (Thunderbird, Mozilla, Mail.app) all exhibit the same behavior - they can check and send mail, but I end up with a single, rogue child imap process on the server that pins the cpu that i have to 'kill -9' to clear out.
Is this a Mac problem or a Dovecot problem? I'm not even sure what to look for in the logs...
Hmm. Check with ktrace what the imap process is doing and send the log to me? (I'm not exactly sure how ktrace worked, it was a bit weird.) And maybe check with gdb too where it's stuck at (gdb /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap <pid> and "bt" command). Or is it imap process or imap-login process?
Got one (although I'm not sure if this comes from handling a Mac mail reader):
45793 dovecot CALL sendto(0x9,0x11ffac40,0x45,0,0,0) 45793 dovecot GIO fd 9 wrote 69 bytes "<19>Dec 10 22:37:15 dovecot: socketpair() failed: Too many open files" 45793 dovecot RET sendto 69/0x45 45793 dovecot CALL socketpair(0x1,0x1,0,0x11ffb9d0) 45793 dovecot RET socketpair -1 errno 24 Too many open files 45793 dovecot CALL gettimeofday(0x11ffabf0,0) 45793 dovecot RET gettimeofday 0
This is what's happening on an alpha/freebsd, in a tight loop.
(FreeBSD s2.enemy.org 4.9-STABLE FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE #1: Mon Nov 24 10:37:25 CET 2003 root@s2.enemy.org:/u/src/sys/compile/S2 alpha)
Unfortunately, I couldn't extract a gdb backtrace. Perhaps you can work with that until I can get one (should be another 2-4 days) (-:
Anyway, I haven't noticed problems with Mail.app.
Thanks a lot,
Hi Darren,
On Mar 31, 2004, at 6:22 PM, darren david wrote:
hey all-
just a ping to see if this ssue has been resolved. it's still popping up for me. Also wondering whose the owner of the OpenBSD port and if we'll be seeing an updated version anytime soon? we're still on 0.99.10.2 as far as i can tell...
I am running dovecot 0.99.10.4 on FreeBSD 5.2.1-p4, and I use MacOS X 10.3.3 mail.app to connect to the imap + imaps ports. I have no problems I can tell at the moment, all mail that gets in, I see in my client, I can delete and move all I want :)
cheers, darren
Regards,
Maikel Verheijen
indeed, this is case for me as well -- no obvious problems on the client side. but more often than not checking mail from the Mac (Thunderbird and Mail.app) leaves an 'imap' process running in a loop and consuming all available CPU resources -- i end up 'sudo kill -9'-ing them throughout the day.
darren
Maikel Verheijen wrote:
Hi Darren,
On Mar 31, 2004, at 6:22 PM, darren david wrote:
hey all-
just a ping to see if this ssue has been resolved. it's still popping up for me. Also wondering whose the owner of the OpenBSD port and if we'll be seeing an updated version anytime soon? we're still on 0.99.10.2 as far as i can tell...
I am running dovecot 0.99.10.4 on FreeBSD 5.2.1-p4, and I use MacOS X 10.3.3 mail.app to connect to the imap + imaps ports. I have no problems I can tell at the moment, all mail that gets in, I see in my client, I can delete and move all I want :)
cheers, darren
Regards,
Maikel Verheijen
!DSPAM:406afa4770292045218532!
Today, darren david darren@3x3x3.org wrote:
hey all-
just a ping to see if this ssue has been resolved. it's still popping up for me.
Resolved - no, not AFAICT. We resolved to re-start the dovecot process every night, so it's no longer really bad.
I couldn't find out more about what is causing the endless recursion. It really looks like dovecot runs out of sockets, then logs that to syslog, fails, tries to log that to syslog, etc.
Cheers,
Andreas Fuchs, asf@boinkor.net, asf@jabber.at, antifuchs
On 2003-12-08, darren david darren@3x3x3.org wrote:
but Mac clients (Thunderbird, Mozilla, Mail.app) all exhibit the same behavior - they can check and send mail, but I end up with a single, rogue child imap process on the server that pins the cpu that i have to 'kill -9' to clear out.
A friend of mine who runs dovecot 0.99.10.2 on freebsd/alpha (from ports, thus the low version number) just reported this same symptom to me. Apparently, dovecot runs fine for a few days, and then an imap process hogs 100% cpu and has to be killed I'll see if I can get a ktrace from it.
Is this a Mac problem or a Dovecot problem? I'm not even sure what to look for in the logs...
Remarkably, he too is using a Mac OSX client - mulberry, though.
We'll see soon enough, I think.
Good luck hunting the bug,
Andreas Fuchs, asf@boinkor.net, asf@jabber.at, antifuchs
Andreas Fuchs wrote:
A friend of mine who runs dovecot 0.99.10.2 on freebsd/alpha (from ports, thus the low version number) [...]
I've taken maintainership of the FreeBSD dovecot port, you can now find 0.99.10.4 in the tree. Along with enhanced package install/uninstall and start/stop scripts.
- Robin
participants (6)
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Andreas Fuchs
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darren david
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Maikel Verheijen
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Olivier Tharan
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Robin Breathe
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Timo Sirainen