[dovecot2] 'port load dovecot2' breaks imap & pop3

Bjarne D Mathiesen macintosh at mathiesen.info
Sat Jan 21 17:13:58 PST 2012


This is a bit long, but then I hope every bit of information necessary
for describing this problem is present ;-)

I finally got around to replacing my very old setup
    MacBook 520c / Mac OS 8.1 / 56MB RAM / PPC 603e 182MHz / 18GB HD
    Stalker SMTP Server 1.8b8
with something current:
    dovecot2 @2.0.17_0+mysql5+postgresql91 (active)
    dovecot2-sieve @0.2.5_0 (active)
    postfix @2.8.7_0+dovecot_sasl+mysql5+pcre+postgresql91+tls (active)
    postfixadmin @2.3.4 (www, mail, php)
    sqlgrey @1.8.0-rc2_2+mysql (active)
    sqwi @1.1.2 (www, mail, php)
    roundcubemail @0.7 (www, mail, php)

I immediately ran into a serious problem, in that for some - not all -
email accounts fetching email via both imap & pop3 didn't succeed.

The symptoms for the affected email accounts were:
   login was successful for both imap & pop3
   pop3 : 'STAT' made the process hang
          I never got around to testing other pop3 commands
   imap : 'b select inbox' made the process hang
          'b list "" "*"' worked
   I had stray/hanging dovecot/imap & dovecot/pop3 processes
   in the maildir I had a 'dovecot-uidlist.lock' file
      that never got removed
   deleting all of the dovecot* files for the frozen maildirs
      and restarting dovecot2 _sometimes_ made the problem go away
      for a time
   the problem was present for all clients I tried:
      Seamonkey          :: pop3
      telnet localhost   :: pop3 & imap
      telnet <ip-number> :: pop3 & imap
      telnet <hostname>  :: pop3 & imap
      Apple Mail         :: pop3
      roundcubemail      ::        imap
   the telnet client processes were hanging and never timed out

I finally discovered that the culprit is in how macports implements the
launchctl plist file for dovecot2

Displays the symptoms
    Starting dovecot2 with "port load dovecot2"
    Rebooting the computer and letting launchd load the plist
Works perfectly
    Starting dovecot2 with just "dovecot" in Terminal

I've taken a good look at the org.macports.dovecot2.plist file, but for
the life of me I can't see what's wrong with neither the plist nor the
process as "port load <server-process>" works perfectly for
    apache2
    mysql5
    sqlgrey
    postfix
:-(

Now, can somebody point me in a direction for further testing ???

NOTE : my system is a bit excentric in that I've got three (3) ethernet
interfaces on the box :
     2 100Mb Apple USB Ethernet Adapters with global ip-addresses
     1 1Gb internal Ethernet Interface on LAN

root# system_profiler SPEthernetDataType
2012-01-22 01:34:36.524 system_profiler[47377:903] Found bsdName
(0x2603) for AppleUSBEthernet
2012-01-22 01:34:36.626 system_profiler[47377:903] Found bsdName
(0x2c03) for AppleUSBEthernet
Ethernet Cards:

    Apple USB Ethernet Adaptor:

      Type: USB
      BSD name: en4
      Kext name: AppleUSBEthernet.kext
      Location:
/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBEthernet.kext
      Version: 2.1.39
      MAC Address: 00:1f:f3:8a:f3:5a
      Product ID: 5122
      Vendor ID: 1452

    Apple USB Ethernet Adaptor:

      Type: USB
      BSD name: en3
      Kext name: AppleUSBEthernet.kext
      Location:
/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBEthernet.kext
      Version: 2.1.39
      MAC Address: 00:1f:f3:8b:26:c1
      Product ID: 5122
      Vendor ID: 1452

    Marvell Yukon Gigabit Adapter 88E8053 Singleport Copper SA:

      Name: ethernet
      Type: Ethernet Controller
      Bus: PCI
      Vendor ID: 0x11ab
      Device ID: 0x4362
      Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x11ab
      Subsystem ID: 0x5321
      Revision ID: 0x0022
      Link Width: x1
      BSD name: en0
      Kext name: AppleYukon2.kext
      Location:
/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleYukon2.kext
      Version: 3.2.1b1

    ethernet:

      Type: Ethernet Controller
      Bus: PCI
      Slot: AirPort
      Vendor ID: 0x168c
      Device ID: 0x001c
      Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x106b
      Subsystem ID: 0x0086
      Revision ID: 0x0001
      Link Width: x1
      BSD name: en1
      Kext name: AirPortAtheros21.kext
      Location:
/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AirPortAtheros21.kext
      Version: 425.14.7

root# ifconfig
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
	inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
	inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
	inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	ether 00:16:cb:a8:7d:01
	inet6 fe80::216:cbff:fea8:7d01%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
	inet 192.168.1.37 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
	media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control>)
	status: active
en4: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	ether 00:1f:f3:8a:f3:5a
	inet6 fe80::21f:f3ff:fe8a:f35a%en4 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5
	inet 90.184.13.xxx netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast 90.184.13.zzz
	media: autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control>)
	status: active
en3: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	ether 00:1f:f3:8b:26:c1
	inet6 fe80::21f:f3ff:fe8b:26c1%en3 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x6
	inet 90.184.12.yyy netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast 90.184.13.zzz
	media: autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control>)
	status: active
fw0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 2030
	lladdr 00:17:f2:ff:fe:8e:e6:d2
	media: autoselect <full-duplex>
	status: inactive
en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	ether 00:17:f2:52:62:9e
	media: autoselect (<unknown type>)
	status: inactive

root# system_profiler SPHardwareDataType
Hardware:

    Hardware Overview:

      Model Name: Mac mini
      Model Identifier: Macmini1,1
      Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
      Processor Speed: 1,83 GHz
      Number Of Processors: 1
      Total Number Of Cores: 2
      L2 Cache: 2 MB
      Memory: 2 GB
      Bus Speed: 667 MHz
      Boot ROM Version: MM11.0055.B08
      SMC Version (system): 1.3f4

root# system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType
Software:

    System Software Overview:

      System Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
      Kernel Version: Darwin 10.8.0
      Boot Volume: X
      Boot Mode: Normal
      Computer Name: MiniWeb
      User Name: System Administrator (root)
      Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled
      64-bit Kernel and Extensions: No
      Time since boot: 5 days 1:31

-- 
Bjarne D Mathiesen
K¿benhavn N ; Danmark ; Europa
----------------------------------------------------------------------
denne besked er skrevet i et totalt M$-frit miljø
MacOS X 10.7.2 Lion ; 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 ; 16GB 1067MHz DDR3



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