>Has anyone else experienced similar problems with the POP3 server?
>Any ideas to fix it?
You may be seeing a similar issue as a long ongoing... What do you see
as 'freezing up'? Do you see hung dovecot-auth processes (ps)? Are other
services, like FTP, experiencing similar issues for the same users
during this time? Do you notice anything unusual in your logs during
this time (lots of failed login attempts)?
I think the base issue is related to pwdb, and when you reboot your
server, it is actually running 'dbrecover' that is actually fixing the
issue. When this issue occurs, anything relying on pwdb also has a
similar issue. Like FTP for the same users would also be "frozen".
There are several scripts/procedures posted on this list that fixes the
issue; it stops services related to pwdb, kills any hung processes, runs
dbrecover, and then restart services. At least you wouldn't have to
reboot.
Brian (at mark) Nuonce suggested some tweaks for dovecot.conf to enable
auth_cache. This was very successful on my BlueQuartz servers, and I
don't remember the last time I had an issue with POP3... Well, no issues
since April when it was posted... I did not do the PAM change, just the
dovecot.conf change (but I can't remember if this was changed upstream
in BlueQuartz, so should have come down in 'yum update'?)...
http://www.bluequartz.us/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=21308&sid=117d18a3c89e92
fff5e8ffd8f0940833
In your /etc/dovecot.conf
Search for:
Code:
#auth_cache_size = 0
Change to:
auth_cache_size = 1024
Search for:
passdb pam {
Then look below for:
#args =
Change to:
args = session=yes cache_key=%u%s dovecot
It is right before the '}', so make sure you get the correct
one.
Save the file and restart Dovecot.
Brian also recently posted a good procedure to switch from pwdb to
passwd/shadow... http://www.nuonce.net/bq-howto.php?action=view&id=23
... But, it was asked what happens when there is an BlueQuartz update,
would this procedure have to be done again? I didn't catch the answer.
So, just watch the 'yum update's if you go this direction...
You should look at your logs and try to figure out what is causing
this... I think most of this happens for two reasons, either because of
a dictionary-attack, or because you just have a high-volume POP3 service
(well, these two reasons are basically the same, high-volume, either
real-users or a 'bot' with login failures). I think someone was offering
a reasonable priced firewall add-on that would prevent
dictionary-attacks against POP3/FTP? So, this might be another option to
consider.
Rusty