IMAP not working

[geoff soper]

I've recently had issues with my VPS filling up and stopping working. I've now freed one GB of space but I have no IMAP access to the server. Nothing is showing as down in the control panel but mail clients say the server is refusing connections. Likewise with telnet on port 143.

I have root SSH access to the server.

Can anyone suggest what diagnosis or solution I should be applying?

Many thanks,
Geoff

 

[atomicturtle]

Check your firewall rules, and try telneting to the port externally to see if anything is listening

 

[geoff soper]

Hi,
I don't know anything about firewalls on my server but I don't think it's them. There's no response from tetnetting to port 143 so I think that's where the problem lies...

Any more ideas on how to diagnose my problem (the support people at my host are atrocious!)

Many thanks!

 

[atomicturtle]

I wrote a great book about them

iptables -L -n would dump your rules

 

[geoff soper]

I wrote a great book about them

iptables -L -n would dump your rules

They seem pretty minimal:

[root@lvps212-241-195-198 root]# iptables -L -n
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
[root@lvps212-241-195-198 root]#

Does that help at all?

 

[geoff soper]

BTW, this is what I got from trying to connect:

* BYE [ALERT] Cannot connect to IMAP server 212.241.195.198 (212.241.195.198:143
), connect error 10061


Connection to host lost.

C:\Documents and Settings\Geoff>

 

[geoff soper]

Solved!

I found the following errors in /var/log/messages :

May 2 03:05:03 lvps212-241-195-198 xinetd[27723]: missing service keyword [file=/etc/xinetd.d/courier-imapd] [line=1]
May 2 03:05:03 lvps212-241-195-198 xinetd[27723]: missing service keyword [file=/etc/xinetd.d/courier-pop3d] [line=1]


In case this helps anyone else in the future, I found the problem:

/etc/xinetd.d/courier-imapd :
ervice imap
{
disable = no
flags = NODELAY
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/bin/tcp-env
server_args = -R -f /etc/courier-imap/imapd /usr/sbin/imaplogin /usr/lib/courier-imap/authlib/authpsa /usr/bin/imapd Maildir
log_type = FILE /var/log/imapd.log
log_on_success = PID HOST EXIT DURATION
log_on_failure = HOST ATTEMPT
}

Somehow, the initial 's' had been deleted! The same went for the POP3 file.