[Dovecot] reload without shutting imap connections down

[Hajo Locke]

Hello,

we have some problems with users who report connectionproblems to dovecot 
sometimes. According to the logs there are dovecot reloads at this times.
Seems that a reload also causes dovecot to shut all imapconnections down:

Jul 16 13:31:40 myhostname dovecot: master: Warning: SIGHUP received - 
reloading configuration
Jul 16 13:31:40 myhostname dovecot: imap: Server shutting down. 
bytes=251/675

I tried to reload by initscript or sending -HUP manually to pid, dovecot is 
shutting down imapconnections and i think this is the reason for users to 
report this problems with some clients.
This seems to be new with versions 2.x, i have some old 1.2.x dovecots 
running and cant find "Server shutting down" in their logs after reload.

I have still potential to reduce reloads, but cant avoid them completely. Is 
there a workaround?

Thanks,
Hajo