[Dovecot] --log-error and the mysterious "not starting" problem

[Marshal Newrock]

I've finally upgraded to 1.0.rc21.  If I run "dovecot --log-error", then
dovecot fails to start. The following appears in the log:

Feb  5 10:54:00 taurus1 dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.rc21 starting up
Feb  5 10:54:00 taurus1 dovecot: This is Dovecot's error log

Without --log-error, it will start up fine from command-line.

Dovecot still fails to start, as near as I can tell, in the specific
condition that it is being started from a non-interactive shell and
there is a mail_plugin set in "protocol imap".  mail plugins set for
pop or lda do not cause this problem.  The failure to start appears in
only two instances that I can see: on boot, or by a monitoring script
if dovecot crashes, or, since I haven't seen dovecot die, when I
manually stop it to see if the monitoring program will restart it.

With the above problem, if the init script has --log-error when I try
to make the monitoring program restart dovecot, then nothing still gets
logged.

-- 
Marshal Newrock, Ideal Solution LLC
http://www.idealso.com