Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 986045
dovecot imap sometimes fails to start because another service has taken the IMAPS port
Last modified: 2013-08-14 07:08:02 EDT
Description of problem: dovecot starts up pretty late in the boot process (S65 in runlevel 3). So sometimes another service that binds to a random port (NFS in our case) starts up before it, and binds to a port that dovecot wants to use. Consequently, dovecot will not start. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): dovecot-2.0.9-5.el6.x86_64 How reproducible: Some (small) fraction of the time. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install dovecot and configure it to listen on the imaps port. 2. Start up the system. Actual results: Sometimes another process will bind to port 993 before dovecot and so it won't start up. Trying to start it manually also won't work: # /sbin/service dovecot start Starting Dovecot Imap: Error: service(imap-login): listen(*, 993) failed: Address already in use Fatal: Failed to start listeners [FAILED] (I guess you could force this to happen 100% of the time by pinning one of the NFS daemons to port 993 by modifying /etc/sysconfig/nfs.) Expected results: dovecot starts normally. Additional info: A fix that works for me: use portreserve, i.e. echo "993" > /etc/portreserve/imaps Add to /etc/init.d/dovecot in the start() function: [ -x /sbin/portrelease ] && /sbin/portrelease imaps &>/dev/null || :
This was already reported. Closing as duplicate. Unfortunately, the original bug is private, so you won't be able to see it. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 723228 ***