[afnog] Courier-Imapd: FAM Errors and Periodic Authentication Failures

[Begumisa Gerald M]

Hi!

I have a [fairly] working courier-imapd installation on a FreeBSD
5.3-RELEASE box.  Both pop3 and imap access has been configured.
Authentication of users is done against a MySQL database and it works
(most of the time)

There are 2 particular issues that I'm failing to figure out.

1. Periodic Authentication Failures
   --------------------------------

I'm experiencing some unexplainable behaviour where authdaemond
periodically fails to log in to the MySQL database.  I've configured
/usr/local/etc/authlib/authmysqlrc with the correct username and password
that authdaemond should use when logging into the MySQL database to
authenticate users who are attempting to access their mail from IMAP /
POP3 clients.  Periodically, I get the following in the log files:

--
Jan 5 11:05:12 stratus authdaemond: failed to connect to mysql server
(server=localhost, userid=postfix): Access denied for user:
'postfix at localhost' (Using password: YES)
--

This failure happens about once for every 7 times a given user accesses
their mail.  Has anyone experienced this before?  What could be the
problem?


2. FAM Issues
   ----------

As I was installing courier-imap from the ports, I found out that one of
the prerequisites was the "File Alteration Monitor" system.  This was
correctly (I hope) installed and the following entry was made in
/etc/inetd.conf:

--
sgi_fam/1-2     stream  rpc/tcp wait    root    /usr/local/bin/fam      fam
--

The following entry was made in /etc/rpc:

--
sgi_fam         391002
--

The following is the output of rpcinfo -p:

--
   program vers proto   port  service
    100000    4   tcp    111  rpcbind
    100000    3   tcp    111  rpcbind
    100000    2   tcp    111  rpcbind
    100000    4   udp    111  rpcbind
    100000    3   udp    111  rpcbind
    100000    2   udp    111  rpcbind
    100000    4 local    111  rpcbind
    100000    3 local    111  rpcbind
    100000    2 local    111  rpcbind
    391002    2   tcp    622  sgi_fam
--

However, when users access their mail, the following errors show up in
the logs:

--
Jan  5 11:05:37 stratus imapd: Error: Input/output error
Jan  5 11:05:37 stratus imapd: Check for proper operation and configuration
Jan  5 11:05:37 stratus imapd: of the File Access Monitor daemon (famd).
Jan  5 11:05:37 stratus imapd: Failed to create cache file: maildirwatch
(ratest at online-last.co.ug)
--

Any clues?

Thanks in advance.


Cheers!
Gerald.