Overview
This guide will show you how to test the POP3 and IMAP services running on your DV server. We also show you remedies to common problems.
Requirements
Before you start, this article has the following dependencies:
- You must have SSH access set up for root or a sudo user.
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Checking Service Availability
Log in to your server over SSH and input the following commands:
Test POP3
telnet localhost 110
Test IMAP
telnet localhost 143
If your POP3/IMAP services are running, you will see responses similar to the following:
POP3
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK Hello there
IMAP
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE ACL ACL2=UNION STARTTLS] Courier-IMAP ready. Copyright 1998-2004 Double Precision Inc. See COPYING for distribution information.
Testing login capability
You can perform a login attempt over telnet to these services quite easily.
POP3
Upon making the initial conneciton attempt, you should get the +OK Hello There message. Now do the following:
user username@example.com
+OK Password required.
pass PASSWORD
+OK logged in.
list
+OK POP3 clients that break here, they violate STD53.
TIP:
The +OK
messages in between commands are server responses.
IMAP
Upon making the initial connection attempt, you should get the * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1...] message. Now do the following:
01 login username@example.com <password>
You should get the following response from the server:
01 OK LOGIN Ok.
Troubleshooting
If you make a connection attempt through either port 110(POP3) or 143(IMAP) and get a response similar to the following:
Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
This is an indication that the Courier-IMAP service is not running.
First, check if courier-imap is running:
ps ax | grep courier
If you see no output, try to start the Courier-IMAP service from the command line:
service courier-imap start
Check /var/log/messages
and /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog
for possible start up errors:
cat /var/log/messages
cat /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog
If after attempting to restart the service you are still encountering a connection refused error message, try to run courier-imap with the default configuration. To do this, backup the original configuration files:
- /etc/courier-imap/pop3d for POP3
- /etc/courier-imap/imapd for IMAP
Replace these with the default distribution configuration files:
- /etc/courier-imap/pop3d.dist for POP3
- /etc/courier-imap/imapd.dist for IMAP
Now, restart courier-imap and try to login again. In case of success, compare the original and *.dist files in order to find the option that may have caused the problem.