Topic: Problem with pop3

[FNC]

Hi,
I am running SME 7.2
Yesterday I noticed that I received a error when trying to send/receive email.
The error "cannot connect to incoming server"

I noticed a lot of email in the queue (about 1200). So I delete all the mail in the queue (I had to start in single user mode as I could not get qmail to stop).

Now the queue is empty, but I still get the error when doing a send and receive.
I also notice that external mail is very slow to leave the server. There don't seems to be a problem with connection.

My question is, is there a limit to the amount of pop3 connections? How can I trouble shoot this problem?
I am able to receive email but only once out of ten times.
I don't see any errors in /var/log/pop3/current

Regards
 

[warren]

I am running SME 7.2

You should upgrade to 7.3

also check if this is applicable to your server

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=42253.0

[FNC]

After a lot of google searches, I found that it could be a problem with reverse DNS lookup.
It seems like it can be disabled run file for qmail-pop3d with, but I cannot find that file.

Does any one have any idea?

[FNC]

 

OK since no one knows the answer to my question, I will post what i did so that others with similar problem can also resolve it.

First of all, the solution was not to upgrade to 7.3.

There is in fact a limit to the amount of pop3 and SMTP connections in qmail.
These can be found at /service/pop3/run for pop3 and /var/qmail/control/concurrencyremote for SMTP.

In the run file for pop3 connections, there is a line like:
-c ${CONCURRENCYREMOTE:-40} \
I changed my to:
-c ${CONCURRENCYREMOTE:-200} \
This increase the maximum concurrent connections for pop3 from 40 to 200.
After you changed it you have to restart pop3. This worked for me:
service pop3 restart
 
For SMTP, edit the /var/qmail/control/concurrencyremote file and add the number you want.
My was 20 and I changed it to 120
You have to restart qmail for the change to take affect. I could not for the life of me get qmail to restart, so I just restarted the server.

If you monitor your log files you can see the amount of current connections.
For pop3 look in /var/log/pop3/current, you will see something like  tcpsvd: info: status 149/200
This means that it is the 149th connection of 200 allowed.

And for SMTP in /var/log/qmail/current look for status: local 1/10 remote 71/120
As you can see you can change the number of SMTP connections for both local and remote. Since my local connections is only 1/10 I had no need to change it.

This resolved my problem with POP3 connection timeouts and slow mail leaving the server.

As a matter of interest you can infact tell qmail-pop3 not to look for reverse DNS for local clients.
This is also done in /service/pop3/run with the following option:
-l ${LOCALNAME:-0} \
But this option seems to be a default in sme server.

Hope this helps someone with similar problem

Regards

[CharlieBrady]

Yesterday I noticed that I received a error when trying to send/receive email.

Which? Sending and receiving mail are different operations, which use different software.

My question is, is there a limit to the amount of pop3 connections?

pop3 has nothing to do with sending mail or outgoing mail queues.

[Stefano]

For SMTP, edit the /var/qmail/control/concurrencyremote file and add the number you want.
My was 20 and I changed it to 120
You have to restart qmail for the change to take affect. I could not for the life of me get qmail to restart, so I just restarted the server.

if you have changed this files directly, you are not doing the right thing.. that's not the SME's way.. please read CAREFULLY the documentation and this page

Ciao
Stefano