dovecot - Nov 2009 - defunct in 1.24 on FreeBSD Alphaserver

Hello,

I've recently upgraded Dovecot from 1.1.16 to 1.2.4 on FreeSBD 6.3- 
RELEASE running on old Alphaserver 1200.
Some time after this upgrade all user's MUAs showed error that user  
password was not accepted. I've noticed many zombies of imap and pop3  
processes on my server (all in defunct state). Looks like when  
"login_max_processes_count" was reached, Dovecot canceled all new  
connections.

I've setup completely new configuration based on
http://wiki.dovecot.org/TestInstallation
  and no error was produced but every time I closed telnet the imap  
process became defunct.

So, I tried to trace what was happening with ktrace:
ktrace -d -f log -p pid_of_imap_process

In attached file is a part of ktrace output at the moment when I close  
telnet connection.
What is interesting (at last for me, but I'm lamer) is an error:
1576 imap     1256902587.568406 CALL  close(0xffffffffffffffff)
1576 imap     1256902587.568448 RET   close -1 errno 9 Bad file  
descriptor

AFAIK, such error could be produced by inconsistent file system so I  
double checked OS and I'm 100% sure it's OK.

At the very end of this history I had to switch back to 1.1.16 version  
of Dovecot which works OK now.

I'll be very thankful if somebody could point me to explanation what  
can cause such strange behavior.

Regards,
Pawel Kaczor


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-- 
"A z kwiatk?w, jakie pan lubi najbardziej? Sztukami?s z kwiatkiem"
Pawe? Kaczor <paczor at gmail.com>

On Mon, 2009-11-02 at 23:43 +0100, Pawe? Kaczor wrote:
> I've setup completely new configuration based on
http://wiki.dovecot.org/TestInstallation
>   and no error was produced but every time I closed telnet the imap  
> process became defunct.
> 
> So, I tried to trace what was happening with ktrace:
> ktrace -d -f log -p pid_of_imap_process
defunct processes happen because their parent process doesn't wait() for
them. So you should be looking at "dovecot" process and see if
it's
calling wait() or equivalent.
> In attached file is a part of ktrace output at the moment when I close  
> telnet connection.
It also indicates that you had rawlog enabled. I guess you also checked
that it happens even without rawlog?
> What is interesting (at last for me, but I'm lamer) is an error:
> 1576 imap     1256902587.568406 CALL  close(0xffffffffffffffff)
> 1576 imap     1256902587.568448 RET   close -1 errno 9 Bad file  
> descriptor
That's a bug, but doesn't matter much. In any case it can't cause
defunct processes.
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