I have been using Dovecot for an IMAP server for a few years now, with no hitch. Even using Outlook 2K/2K3 as a client. Yesterday, I had a user experience the 'Negative UIDs' issue spoken of here: http://wiki.dovecot.org/Clients/NegativeUIDs I performed all of the steps mentioned in this article, and it seemed like it would work properly the first time the user checked their email, and then after that, they would get this error again. I checked to see what the latest stable version of Dovecot was, and decided to upgrade. I was at 0.99.11-8 and the latest stable rpm for my distro was 1.0.2-2. The upgrade went fine. Or so I thought. I am now getting the following message on all Outlook Clients: "Your IMAP Server closed the connection....this can occur if the connection is idle for too long" I have scoured the Internet for this error and have come up with many suggestions, none of which have worked. I have increased Outlook's timeout period to the full 10 minutes, and I have disabled SELinux. None of this seems to have worked. Is there anyone out there who has actually had this issue and resolved it? Can you please help? Thanks, Jeff Ramsey MIS Administrator TMI Forest Products, Inc. jefframsey at tubafor.com 360.477.0738 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
Sergey A. Kobzar
2007-Aug-01 06:54 UTC
[Dovecot] Outlook 2000/2003 frequent disconnect issue
Hi Jeff, Did you try play with imap_client_workarounds options? I think this must help you: outlook-idle: Outlook and Outlook Express never abort IDLE command, so if no mail arrives in half a hour, Dovecot closes the connection. This is still fine, except Outlook doesn't connect back so you don't see if new mail arrives. Wednesday, August 1, 2007, 3:12:17 AM, you wrote:> I have been using Dovecot for an IMAP server for a few years now, > with no hitch. Even using Outlook 2K/2K3 as a client.> Yesterday, I had a user experience the 'Negative UIDs' issue spoken > of here: http://wiki.dovecot.org/Clients/NegativeUIDs> I performed all of the steps mentioned in this article, and it seemed > like it would work properly the first time the user checked their > email, and then after that, they would get this error again.> I checked to see what the latest stable version of Dovecot was, and > decided to upgrade. I was at 0.99.11-8 and the latest stable rpm for > my distro was 1.0.2-2.> The upgrade went fine. Or so I thought.> I am now getting the following message on all Outlook Clients:> "Your IMAP Server closed the connection....this can occur if the > connection is idle for too long"> I have scoured the Internet for this error and have come up with many > suggestions, none of which have worked. I have increased Outlook's > timeout period to the full 10 minutes, and I have disabled SELinux. > None of this seems to have worked.> Is there anyone out there who has actually had this issue and > resolved it? Can you please help?> Thanks,> Jeff Ramsey > MIS Administrator > TMI Forest Products, Inc. > jefframsey at tubafor.com > 360.477.0738-- Sergey
On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 17:12 -0700, Jeff Ramsey wrote:> I am now getting the following message on all Outlook Clients: > > "Your IMAP Server closed the connection....this can occur if the > connection is idle for too long"What does Dovecot show in logs as the disconnect reason? This sounds like the IDLE problem that outlook-idle workaround avoids, but that's the default so I'd think you haven't disabled it. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20070801/9f5be2a7/attachment-0002.bin>
On Aug 1, 2007, at 2:26 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:> On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 17:12 -0700, Jeff Ramsey wrote: >> I am now getting the following message on all Outlook Clients: >> >> "Your IMAP Server closed the connection....this can occur if the >> connection is idle for too long" > > What does Dovecot show in logs as the disconnect reason? > > This sounds like the IDLE problem that outlook-idle workaround avoids, > but that's the default so I'd think you haven't disabled it. >I've got the outlook-idle workaround turned on. I am using this line in the /etc/dovecot.conf: imap_client_workarounds = outlook-idle Dovecot does not show any reason for the disconnect. It just shows that the user logged out: Aug 1 08:09:44 imap dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<jefframsey>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:10.11.254.52, lip=::ffff:65.174.242.66 Aug 1 08:09:44 imap dovecot: IMAP(jefframsey): Disconnected: Logged out Aug 1 08:10:06 imap dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<geoff>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:10.10.254.148, lip=::ffff:65.174.242.66 Aug 1 08:10:13 imap dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<QUINAULT- donnaanderson>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:10.200.254.121, lip=::ffff: 65.174.242.66 Aug 1 08:10:13 imap dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<QUINAULT- donnaanderson>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:10.200.254.121, lip=::ffff: 65.174.242.66 Aug 1 08:10:52 imap dovecot: IMAP(QUINAULT-donnaanderson): Disconnected: Logged out Aug 1 08:10:52 imap dovecot: IMAP(QUINAULT-donnaanderson): Disconnected: Logged out I have read that this means that the client was the one that disconnected, but that does not make sense, because with 0.99.x, I did not have this issue. And I did not change anything in my Outlook clients. All I have changed is upgrading Dovecot. Since my initial post, I have noticed this in my log file as well: Aug 1 08:13:42 imap dovecot: auth(default): userdb(johnfowler,::ffff: 65.174.242.248): user not found from userdb Aug 1 08:13:42 imap dovecot: imap-login: Internal login failure: user=<johnfowler>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:65.174.242.248, lip=::ffff:65.174.242.66 Aug 1 08:13:50 imap dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<johnfowler>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:65.174.242.248, lip=::ffff:65.174.242.66 This does not happen all of the time when a person logs in, in fact I have not heard of a single person having a login failure, or at least nobody has told me they got a message about an improper login or failed password or anything like that so far. The one thing I can think of is maybe the authentication methods have changed for Dovecot from 0.99.x to 1.0.2. I use Winbind to authenticate my Active Directory users to my linux boxen for all of their services, and Dovecot is no exception. Maybe something has changed in the /etc/ pam.d folder. I have not heard of anyone having any authentication errors at this point, however, my own computer, which uses Mac Mail 2.1.1 as a client, has in fact been throwing these errors this morning, a couple of times an hour: The server error encountered was: The user name and password specified in Mail preferences were not accepted by the server. So far, I have not had any error about username and/or password from any of my Outlook users, just this one Mac client. As soon as I click on 'Go Online' at the error screen, the error goes away, and everything is fine for a 5 to 10 minutes, then I'll see it again. And no, it does not happen every time my client syncs folders to IMAP. More like one out of 10 times, and really random. Has anything changed in the way that Dovecot handles authentication that may be causing this issue? The way that (I think) PAM handles authentication from Winbind is first it tries local accounts, and then if they fail, it tries Winbind, so if the local username is not found, it could explain why it is giving this error: Aug 1 08:13:42 imap dovecot: auth(default): userdb(johnfowler,::ffff: 65.174.242.248): user not found from userdb Aug 1 08:13:42 imap dovecot: imap-login: Internal login failure: user=<johnfowler>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:65.174.242.248, lip=::ffff:65.174.242.66 Then, when Winbind auth is tried, the authentication succeeds, and I get: Aug 1 08:13:50 imap dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<johnfowler>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:65.174.242.248, lip=::ffff:65.174.242.66 So, I can see that the Winbind auth is working, but perhaps Dovecot is sending the client an auth failed after the local auth fails and before the Winbind auth succeeds. Thanks for the suggestions so far, unfortunately I've already tried the outlook-idle workaround. Maybe I should just downgrade to 0.99.x again. Are there any known issues with a downgrade? Jeff Ramsey MIS Administrator TMI Forest Products, Inc. jefframsey at tubafor.com 360.477.0738 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.