Re: dovecot: imap: Connecting to localhost...failed

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:

Hi Dan,

>> That looks correct.  Does it work, if you login using telnet?  I
>> assume no.
>
> Could you explain exactly what you have in mind here?

Sure.

> ~> telnet localhost
> Trying 127.0.0.1...
> telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

You also need to specify the port, that is 143 for unencrypted login or
993 for encrypter login.  Here's a sample session:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
% telnet localhost 143    <== My input
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK Dovecot ready.
1 LOGIN uni MY_PASSWORD   <== My input
1 OK Logged in.
2 SELECT INBOX            <== My input
* FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft gnus-expire KMAILFORWARDED KMAILTODO KMAILWATCHED KMAILIGNORED $FORWARDED $TODO $WATCHED $IGNORED gnus-forward gnus-save)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft gnus-expire KMAILFORWARDED KMAILTODO KMAILWATCHED KMAILIGNORED $FORWARDED $TODO $WATCHED $IGNORED gnus-forward gnus-save \*)] Flags permitted.
* 1501 EXISTS
* 0 RECENT
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1213252650] UIDs valid
* OK [UIDNEXT 2403] Predicted next UID
2 OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

The lines marked with "<== My input" were entered by me.  Substitute
them with your values and poste dovecot's reply messages here (don't
forget to replace your password).

>> I think you cannot say ~, because that will look into the "mail" (or
>> "imap"?) users $HOME only.  To use the users home put a %u into the
>> path.  (I didn't test that.  If it doesn't work, have a look at the
>> docs.  The example dovecot.conf tells you how to do it in the
>> comments above mail_location.)
>
> OK, good point, but I've now tried writing the path explicitly, and I
> get the same error:
>
> mail_location = maildir:/home/dan/Maildir
>
> imap: Connecting to localhost...failed
> nnimap (dc) open error: 'nil'.  Continue? (y or n) 
> Couldn't open server on dc
>
> Maybe this is obviously true but I've just checked and dovecot's not
> logging any messages when gnus tries to connect (I used dovecot
> --log-error to check I can see error messages and turned on auth_verbose
> and auth_debug and auth_debug_passwords).

I think dovecot normally logs to the system logger.  So you should see
any login attempt in /var/log/dovecot.log or whatever you specified as
log_path in dovecot.conf.

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris?
...All of it.