# ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server

## Knox166

Hi,

I'm totally new in the Gentoo/Linux world. Now i want to install a mailserver, because i rent a root server. 

I installed my postfix server with the following help: 

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/virt-mail-howto.xml

My problem is, that it is not possible to log on with Squirrelmail. If I want to login with the complete email adress and password it says: ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server

I know that some other people had this problem written down in the forum but I didn't find a solution that works at my server.

Do you have any ideas what I can do? Which data do you have to have from me?

I think perhaps there is a problem with the .maildir folder, because I found in the messages log that: imapd: chdir .maildir: No such file or directory

Thank you in advance for your help.

Knox166

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## derfian

As the user you are trying to login as to your imap server, try "maildirmake" in that users home directory.

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## Knox166

I think I didn't understand something basically.

Isn't it right that I don't have to create a user at the server for each emailadress. I thought I only have to write the emailadress in the mailsql database?

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## magic919

Have you sent any mail TO the user you are trying to log in as?  Can't see that these are created before Postfix transport tries to drop a message there.

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## Knox166

Thanks for your tips!

Yes I sent an email to the user. The .maildir folder is stored in /home/vmail/blabla.de/admin/.maildir

Admin is the username. So the maildir is available. But it's not possible to logon. T

he system is automatically creating the .maildir folder if I add a new user or? 

The configtest says that everything is fine:

SquirrelMail configtest

This script will try to check some aspects of your SquirrelMail configuration and point you to errors whereever it can find them. You need to go run conf.pl in the config/ directory first before you run this script.

SquirrelMail version:	1.4.5

Config file version:	1.4.0

Config file last modified:	23 January 2006 12:22:29

Checking PHP configuration...

    PHP version 5.0.5-pl3-gentoo OK.

    PHP extensions OK.

Checking paths...

    Data dir OK.

    Attachment dir is the same as data dir.

    Plugins are not enabled in config.

    Themes OK.

    Default language OK.

    Base URL detected as: http://www....../src

Checking outgoing mail service....

    sendmail OK

Checking IMAP service....

    IMAP server ready (* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE ACL ACL2=UNION STARTTLS] Courier-IMAP ready. Copyright 1998-2005 Double Precision, Inc. See COPYING for distribution information.)

    Capabilities: * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE ACL ACL2=UNION STARTTLS

Checking internationalization (i18n) settings...

     gettext - Gettext functions are available. You must have appropriate system locales compiled.

     mbstring - Mbstring functions are available.

     recode - Recode functions are unavailable.

     iconv - Iconv functions are unavailable.

     timezone - Webmail users can change their time zone settings.

Checking database functions...

    not using database functionality.

Congratulations, your SquirrelMail setup looks fine to me!

If I'm typing the wrong password or username, suqirrelmail says: Unknown user or password incorrect. I think that means, that the authentication is working. Only there are some problems with IMAP and perhaps the .maildir.

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## magic919

Bear in mind I don't use Squirrelmail.  Can you use another IMAP client to test at this stage?  I generally recommend breaking the thing down into chunks and testing each bit.  You have some working functionality for SMTP and IMAP, that's clear.  Hit it with a standard IMAP client and watch those logs and any responses from email client.

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## Knox166

Ok thank you.

Sorry I'm totally new in the linux/gentoo world.

Which standard client should I take and do you know any testing tools or should I only look at the /var/log register.

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## magic919

You could just fire up Outlook Express or similar.  That can speak to IMAP mail servers.  Stick in the IP or hostname of the server.

You can also check IMAP by just using Telnet, but that's a bit advanced for now.

If you haven't done anything more than emerge syslog-ng then everything will be in /var/log/messages.  You can get clever with syslog-ng and have it separate these, but that's a bit off the current topic.

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