Message Server Restart Problem

Question

Hello. I've run into the following problem, and hope someone can help.
Was adding a fourth mail partition, and I had problems with the start-msg after doing the stop-msg. Have done this before without any problems.
The start-msg looked as follows:
Starting ENS daemon
/opt/email/server5: Starting STORE daemon ..... done: 14668
/opt/email/server5: Starting POP3 daemon .... done: 14685
/opt/email/server5: Starting IMAP4 daemon ...Cannot bind to port 143: Address already in use
Did a stop/start a second time and the stop complained about no pidfile.imap. Indeed, there is not one. The other services (pop, etc) have
pidfile's.
After doing some reading, I'm thinking the imapd processes were not completely down after the first stop-msg? I see 4 processes now, which
matches the service.imap.numprocesses = 4 config. I was not previously
aware of this number of imapd processes.
Tonight, I will try again. As for the procedure, I plan on waiting a few minutes
to allow imapd processes for finish up so that port 143 can be bound on the
next start. Can those processes be killed if they don't go away? Is there a
method to ensure that the 143 port is ready for a start-msg?
We are on Iplanet MS 5.2. Any help will be much appreciated.
Thank you, Keith

Answer 1

Hi,
The start-msg looked as follows:
Starting ENS daemon
/opt/email/server5: Starting STORE daemon ..... done:
14668
/opt/email/server5: Starting POP3 daemon .... done:
14685
/opt/email/server5: Starting IMAP4 daemon ...Cannot
bind to port 143: Address already in useSounds like one of the imapd processes didn't shut down cleanly - or was still in the process of shutting down when you attempted to restart, and the old process is still bound to port 143.
After doing some reading, I'm thinking the imapd
processes were not completely down after the first
stop-msg? Yep - a fair assumption. That is why usually when shutting down/restarting iMS5.2 I used to make sure all the processes were dead (./stop-msg; ps -ef | grep server5). What can happen is that the process has been asked to 'gracefully' shut down... rather then just kill -9 the process. The graceful shutdown can take a bit of time.
I see 4 processes now, which
matches the service.imap.numprocesses = 4 config. I
was not previously
aware of this number of imapd processes.There should be 4 processes.
Tonight, I will try again. As for the procedure, I
plan on waiting a few minutes
to allow imapd processes for finish up so that port
143 can be bound on the
next start. Yep sounds fair. It's pretty easy to just run a 'ps -ef | grep server5' and see if there are any processes remaining rather then just waiting.
Can those processes be killed if they
don't go away? Yes - but make sure you kill ALL of the messaging processes if they are stuck, don't just concentrate on the imapd process.
Is there a
method to ensure that the 143 port is ready for a
start-msg?Already discussed.
We are on Iplanet MS 5.2. Any help will be much
appreciated.As usual.. iMS5.2 is soon to be out-of-support (may 2007) so you should look to upgrade to version 6.
Regards,
Shane.