I have been seeing the same thing for some time. Seems not client
specific, I see it with Evolution, Thunderbird, and Netscape 7.2 mail
clients.<br>
I thought it was our firewall but users behind the firewall on the same subnet as the dovecot server have the same problem.<br>
Still working on the migration to Dovecot 1, rc5 but have been seeing this in RH stock rpm dovecot on FC3 and CentOS 4.3.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote"><br>
</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br><br>> But I'd like to know what exactly does "stale processes" mean: Do you
<br>> use SSL and they're all SSL connections?</blockquote><div><br>
</div>Mine are not SSL. I get as many as 800 IMAP processes (on
about 1000 users), this dies down overnight, when no one is checking
their mail. <br><div><br>
</div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> Are they eating any CPU at all?<br>
</blockquote><div> </div>Nope.<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br><br><br>> How long are<br>> they stuck, or don't they ever die?</blockquote><div>
<br>
<br>
They will die ovenight, as no one checks mail after 5 PM. I set a process limit at about 1800 just to be safe. <br>
<br>
</div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> How exactly do you know they are stale?<br><br>Because the clients have been closed and the user owning the process
<br>does not have any mail applications open.<br><br>> Are you sure there aren't any<br>> clients that still have active connections to it?<br><br>Pretty sure - of course it could be the client shutting down uncleanly.
<br> Mostly 1.5.0.x of Thunderbird and squirrelmail-1.4.6-5.fc5 with an<br>occasional pine user.<br><br><br>
</blockquote></div><br>
<br>
Same here. If I check my mail w/Evolution (and get no new mail) this process stays around for hours.<br>
<br>
<br>
Sometimes the excessive processes do seem to cause problems (user cannot pop/imap mail, connections auth but hang.<br>
I stop dovecot and wack imap will killall several times, then restart
dovecot. This fixes the user problems but within a few mins I have
300-400 imap processes, this grows over the day to about 800-900.<br>
<br>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>James H. Edwards<br>Network Systems Administrator<br>Judicial Information Division<br><a href="mailto:jedwards@nmcourts.com">jedwards@nmcourts.com</a>