dovecot - Nov 2015 - Connection between postfix and dovecot failing

Hi all,

Hope someone has been here and done that before. 
I am running a Mac mini with OSX server version 10.5, that is on El Capitan, but
the problem I have started on Yosemite (the previous version) and did not change
at all in the upgrade (I had hoped it would have solved itself).

As you might know, OSX server uses postfix and dovecot as mailing engines, good
choice.
Since we suffered a short power outage a little over a week ago, the mail has
failed in delivering messages to the local mailboxes.
We can send mail out, check the mailboxes (they never change right now),etc. but
incoming mail was first just not delivered and after a week warning are sent
back to the senders, telling there is a temporary problem (hope that this
message is right and I can solve the issue).

What seems to go wrong is that postfix cannot connect to the local MTA. The
error message that appears in several places is:

recipient=ann.cools at surikata.be
offset=769
dsn_orig_rcpt=rfc822;ann.cools at surikata.be
status=4.4.1
action=delayed
reason=delivery temporarily suspended: connect to 127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10024:
Connection refused

I find all sorts of explanations and cures, but none work up to now. 
I tried to find lock files that might be blocking, deleted some files ending in
lck with zero size, with no result.
I tried to switch off the spam/virus/junk features, no difference (some mail
said that messages in the queue will not get through, but new ones would. Not
so, not a single message up to now).
I also get alerts in the Server application, warning that: 

An unassigned mail directory has been detected and is scheduled to be deleted.

The unassigned mail directory located in: 
   /Library/Server/Mail/Data/mail/702C16A8-6B2D-42D8-9362-659DD2949AFC
is not associated with any user account and is scheduled to be deleted in 1
days.

In the mean time no mail, and unfortunately, we need it badly.

Any suggestions?

Million thanks for your kind support.

sytse
-- 
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- Sytse Kuijk                            -       ___
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------------------------------------------

iThink therefore iMac

On 28 Nov 2015, at 17:14, Sytse Kuijk <sytse at pobox.com> wrote:
>I am running a Mac mini with OSX server version 10.5, that is on El Capitan,
but the problem I have started on Yosemite (the previous version) and did not
change at all in the upgrade (I had hoped it would have solved itself). ? Since
we suffered a short power outage a little over a week ago, the mail has failed
in delivering messages to the local mailboxes.
So it sounds like you ran an upgrade from Mac OS X 10.10.x and OS X Server 5.x
or 4.x to Mac OS X 10.11.1 and OS X Server 5.0.15 in order to fix a problem
caused by a power outage. I would suggest reverting to a backup from immediately
before the power outage and getting it working first before trying to run the
upgrade (and the migration it runs) - I have had OS X Server become
unrecoverable before due to a power failure and had to rebuild from scratch.
Upgrading could not fix the underlying problems with the state that the
filesystem was in because there had been a data loss. This was a very painful
experience.

Sorry this isn?t specifically Dovecot related, although I have been running
Dovecot for years now on a live Mac OS X computer and upgraded to OS X Server
5.0.15 recently with very few issues other than the usual Apple simplification
complexities and the fact that the OS X Server installer took a *very* long time
to do the migration.

Angus