Troubleshooting Courier-imap/courier-imap-ssl problems

[seamus]

If there's anyone reading who is familiar with Courier, this is probably a straightforward question for you: Where does Courier-imap log to?  If I could see an error I reckon I could probably fix it (with google's help, of course)

After installing the latest Toaster version, I was able to connect to my IMAP once I started it (yep, duh moment) but want to use SSL as I use wifi hotspots quite a bit and don't like people reading my mail. Trouble is it won't start - /usr/local/libexec/courier-imap/imapd-ssl.rc (I'm quoting from memory here, but you get the drift) executes silently but doesn't start anything when I list imap processes (all that's running is authdaemond.plain).

From here I don't where to look for an error message that I can go about tackling. The problem is probably with my ssl certs or ssl related if regular imap works (though I think I've broken that again). I've scoured courier-mta.org for ideas but didn't find what I was looking for.  Any pointers on where to check for errors or what files I should be cheking to make sure are correct?

Thanks,
James

[seamus]

Ok, replying to your own post isn't the ideal way to start out on a forum. But after letting this rest for awhile and then having another look around, I found out that I should have a look at /var/log/maillog. This gives a reasonable amount of information and in my case, shows me that my problem is:
Nov 15 23:42:15 stjamesgate imapd: /usr/local/libexec/courier-imap/authlib/authdaemon: No such file or directory
So I'll figure that out later on (suggestions in the interim are welcome though)

[seamus]

Ok imap and imap-ssl are both starting. I can log into imap and also the LOGIN/LOGOUT in /var/mail/maillog. However, if I try to login over SSL then nothing happens - my mail client just times out. There's nothing in the log file.

Suggestions are now very much appreciated

[davidcl]

Check the existence and permissions on your imapd certificate:

# ls -l /usr/local/share/courier-imap/imapd.pem-rw-------  1 root  wheel  2158 Apr  1  2004 /usr/local/share/courier-imap/imapd.pem

[davidcl]

Also, there are two ways to log in using SSL:

- On the standard IMAP port, 143, using the START TLS extension to the IMAP protocol
- On the "secure" IMAP port, 993, using an SSL session.

Make sure that the port you're connecting to matches what your mail client is going to try to do.

[seamus]

Hi David,

Many apologies for leaving the thread hanging, was travelling. Anyway, there were two separate issues that I had (in the end) and they relate to your last posting. I got myself confused over the SSL and the TLS ports, so once I came back and went through a few steps again with your postings in mind it worked fine for me in Mail.app (on my Mac). The second problem I encountered when testing from another client related to the way the client talked to the imapd-ssl and seems to be a protocol issue. The courier log file bitches about SSL3, I'm getting around to sorting that out shortly.

Many thanks for your assistance.