vm-pop3d problem

T

tonanbarbarian

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Joined
Feb 20, 2006
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4
Having a problem with vm-pop3d and cant really find anything like it in the forums so ill ask and see if anyone knows the issue

running vmpop3d-1.1.7e-1
have about 50 sites setup on the box

issue is that occasionally vmpop3d seems to die and you cannot connect to download mail

sometimes it clears itself but only after an hour or more
mostly i have to go in and stop and restart vm-pop3d
like others i get the subsystem locked issue
and that isnt easy to fix, expect for waiting about 15 minutes and it fixing itself i have tried to stop and start (or restart) xinetd as well as making sure the /var/lock/subsys/vm-pop3d file is deleted, but it doesnt really seem to work

one thing i have noticed is that I seem to have one client in particular who seems to connect to vm-pop3d but never send their username details

i just see a lot of
Mar 10 14:53:17 server vm-pop3d[29870]: Connect from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

but there is no corresponding

Mar 10 14:53:17 server vm-pop3d[29870]: User 'xxxx' of 'sm2.com.au' logged in from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

So I assume this is a number of connections just kept open

eventually i get
Mar 10 14:59:40 server vm-pop3d[28648]: Session timed out for no user

some time after this has been happening for at least 15 minutes vm-pop3d will seem to lock up and you cannot connect

So has anyone seen this before and is there any solutions/work arounds etc

I know there is a newer version of vm-pop3d but I have been concerned by the problems that a number of people have had when upgrading so I am reluctanct to do so (dont want clients screaming even more because they cant get email)
 
Ever find a resolution to this? This is the exact problem I am having and cannot find a solution.

Running vm-Pop3d 1.1.7f-DA-2
 
That is exactly what I ended up doing - I switched to starting vm-pop3d through xinetd.

Is there a reason using the standard start method vm-pop3d would start having troubles accepting connections all of a sudden?

Dovecot is still in Beta so I did not want to go that route.
 
The regular vm-pop3d deaemon only has a limited number of child processes, unlike xinetd. Once that limit is hit, users will not be able to connect.

You can increase the number slightly by editing it's startup options, but it's not a complete solution to the problem.

John
 
Hello... I hope you don't mind me adding to this post. I searched for info about POP3 issues and found this one. I used the advice that John quoted about running the vm-pop3d deaemon from xinetd... I went to the help article and followed it exactly. Now though, vm-pop3d does not automatically start. I have re-examined the changes and can't see anything wrong. One thing that I did do was to add "xinetd=ON" to the /usr/local/directadmin/data/admin/services.status file to make sure it is monitored... that shouldn't have caused any problem should it?

That aside, can anyone give me a hint about this issue? By the way, I made this change because I started having complaints from my clients on POP3 time outs lately. Also, this is on a CentOS 4.3 system with DA 1.29.2 on it. (this may be a coincidence but the time out issue seems to have started after I did the upgrade to v. 1.29.2)

I appreciate your thoughts.
 
You've told DA to monitor a daemon that you don't want running as a daemon.

Worst case, DA is starting it as a daemon (I haven't checked).

I'd say turn it back off. Why would you try to monitor a daemon that doesn't run?

Why would you want to attempt to start a daemon that you don't want to run?

Jeff
 
Hey, Jeff... thanks for the reply. I may have over reacted when I did that. On another server that I had, xinetd sometimes stalled when the server load was extra high... so, I guess I was trying to make sure it got restarted in such an occurance on this box. Maybe I simply outsmarted myself :)

Ok, please help me to understand the way this should appear in the DA control panel... if I run the POP3 through xinetd, should it show up as stopped in the service monitor area of the control panel? When I first tested this change, POP3 didn't seem to work... even after a server reboot. So, I would then start the service through the service monitor area of the control panel to make POP3 work again.

I'll try removing the xinetd entry in service monitor and retest. I will reply here to let you know.
 
Ok, I just removed the monitoring of xinetd from the "services.status" file and then stopped vm-pop3d and restarted xinetd but Outlook errors out and says it cannot connect to POP3. :mad: I had to start vm-pop3d manually to make it work. SO, I assume that for some reason xinetd isn't really picking up the service and running it.

Thoughts?
 
Did you let xinetd know it has to run vm-pop3d? Check your xinetd configuration.

Jeff
 
Jeff... hey, I followed the help file instructions exactly and it didn't seem to work. Is there another step that I need to take to make xinetd kick in? Here is the xinetd.conf file contents:

Code: 
#
# Simple configuration file for xinetd
#
# Some defaults, and include /etc/xinetd.d/

defaults
{
        instances               = 256
        log_type                = SYSLOG authpriv
        log_on_success          = HOST PID
        log_on_failure          = HOST
        cps                     = 25 30
}

includedir /etc/xinetd.d

Ok, the instructions in the help file say to create a file called pop3 in the /etc/xinetd.d/ directory with this in it's content:

Code: 
# default: on
# description: pop3
service pop3
{
  log_on_success += DURATION USERID
  log_on_failure += USERID
  port = 110
  socket_type = stream
  user = root
  server = /usr/sbin/vm-pop3d
  server_args = -t 600
  wait = no
  nice = 10
}

Is there something I am missing? Thanks so much for your help!
 
I don't know where you got those instructions. And I don't know if they're right, because I'm not using xinetd to start pop.

I use Dovecot. Perhaps someone who uses vm-pop3d and xinetd can help.

Jeff
 
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