dovecot - Jun 2010 - Dovecot dies, maybe ntpdate related. I'm new to dovecot

Hi all, my first post.

After years with an old server, a couple of months ago I've installed a 
new one.

We use IMAP. After research, I chosed dovecot.

It has been running for several weeks but from one week ago or so, it 
suddently dies about once per day.

The only change done in the server one week ago has been to install 
ntpdate, running once per day in cron-daily.

In the cron reports, ntpdate reports a time-jump of 9 seconds each 
night. We did this because "apparently" we did not a "soft time
drift"
installing the full ntp daemon, but I start thinking the time-jump 
crashes dovecot.

QUESTIONS:

- Might this time-jump cause dovecot to die?
- I don't know wehere the dovecot logs are written to. Where do I start 
searching?

Thanks to all!
Xavi.

-- 
Xavier Montero - 93 589 71 91 - 630 59 01 62 - xmontero at dsitelecom.com

I had the same problem due to clock backward


On 06/25/2010 09:53 AM, Xavi Montero wrote:
> Hi all, my first post.
>
> After years with an old server, a couple of months ago I've installed a
> new one.
>
> We use IMAP. After research, I chosed dovecot.
>
> It has been running for several weeks but from one week ago or so, it
> suddently dies about once per day.
>
> The only change done in the server one week ago has been to install
> ntpdate, running once per day in cron-daily.
>
> In the cron reports, ntpdate reports a time-jump of 9 seconds each
> night. We did this because "apparently" we did not a "soft
time drift"
> installing the full ntp daemon, but I start thinking the time-jump
> crashes dovecot.
>
> QUESTIONS:
>
> - Might this time-jump cause dovecot to die?
> - I don't know wehere the dovecot logs are written to. Where do I start
> searching?
>
> Thanks to all!
> Xavi.
>

Xavi Montero wrote:
> It has been running for several weeks but from one week ago or so, it 
> suddently dies about once per day.
>
> The only change done in the server one week ago has been to install 
> ntpdate, running once per day in cron-daily.
>
> In the cron reports, ntpdate reports a time-jump of 9 seconds each 
> night. We did this because "apparently" we did not a "soft
time drift"
> installing the full ntp daemon, but I start thinking the time-jump 
> crashes dovecot.
>
> QUESTIONS:
>
> - Might this time-jump cause dovecot to die?
> - I don't know wehere the dovecot logs are written to. Where do I 
> start searching?
I would suggest running ntpdate once at startup and then have ntp run 
continuously.

Having step changes in time will likely cause other problems.

Better to treat the problem properly at the source rather than having to 
put sticking-plasters on everything.

Bill

On 25.6.2010 10:53, Xavi Montero wrote:
> The only change done in the server one week ago has been to install
> ntpdate, running once per day in cron-daily.
>
> In the cron reports, ntpdate reports a time-jump of 9 seconds each
Time jumps, especially backwards, are not a good thing on a server. You 
should really consider changing from ntpdate to for example ntpd that 
takes care of keeping the clock synchronized, without unnecessarily 
stepping the clock. You should probably do this even if the actual cause 
of Dovecot crashing turns out not to be the time jumps.

Dovecot typically logs via syslog, so the logs go where your syslog 
writes them to. Usually something under /var/log.

   Tapio

On 25/06/2010 08:53, Xavi Montero wrote:
>
> The only change done in the server one week ago has been to install 
> ntpdate, running once per day in cron-daily.
>
> In the cron reports, ntpdate reports a time-jump of 9 seconds each 
> night. We did this because "apparently" we did not a "soft
time drift"
> installing the full ntp daemon, but I start thinking the time-jump 
> crashes dovecot.
I have started to prefer chrony now that development has restarted on it 
(with one of the redhat guys leading the charge).  At the end of the day 
it's just a time server, but it seems to be simpler to run and quite 
reliable

Regards

Ed W