Dovecot suddenly stopped working. HELP! "can't auth"

Question

I am running out of ideas here.. I've been trying to fix this for 3 hours. Box is debian lenny.

Mail.log contains the following:

Can't connect to auth server at /var/run/dovecot/auth-master: No such file or directory

I can send emails and connect to my imap fine. I can retrieve my draft and deleted folders, but not any new emails. This happened over night afaik. I have setup virtual users, but am no longer using those. I created the following local users "support", and "admin".

/* dovecot.conf */

log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S 
protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s
disable_plaintext_auth: no
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3-login
mail_privileged_group: mail
mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir
mail_executable(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/pop3
pop3_uidl_format(default): 
pop3_uidl_format(imap): 
pop3_uidl_format(pop3): %08Xu%08Xv
auth default:
  passdb:
    driver: pam
  passdb:
    driver: sql
    args: /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf
  userdb:
    driver: passwd
  userdb:
    driver: sql
    args: /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf
  socket:
    type: listen
    client:
      path: /var/spool/postfix/private/auth
      mode: 432
      user: postfix
      group: postfix

/* passwd */

support:x:5001:5001::/home/support:/bin/sh
admin:x:5002:5002::/home/admin:/bin/sh

/* postconf -a */
cyrus
dovecot

I am desperate, please help!

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 08 '10 at 09:45

2

Auth-master file is created at the time of restarting the service, for live environment it would be better if you give mode = 0660 permission on the file

rw-rw---- auth-master

answered Dec 08 '10 at 09:45

Mit Naik

344
2
11

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 08 '10 at 08:03

0

The file /var/run/dovecot/auth-master probably has wrong permissions. Try to change them to 777 temporarily until you find out which user/group has to be set:

chmod 777 /var/run/dovecot/auth-master

answered Dec 08 '10 at 08:03

weeheavy

4,089
1
28
41

Thanks for the reply, but auth-master does not exist. It's commented out in my dovecot.conf. It worked fine before, not sure why I would need it now. – Bastien Dec 08 '10 at 17:12

Dovecot suddenly stopped working. HELP! "can't auth"

2 Answers2