IMAP - Leopard Weirdness

[paul.fox]

Hi Everyone:

I'm having a problem with IMAP working correctly. I have three IMAP accounts on the same server through different domains but when I configure them in Mail.app I get strange results. Sometimes two will be fine, and one won't, sometimes it's the other way around, sometimes they'll all be displaying an alert but never have they all worked together.

I have tried both with SSL and without. I have deleted and recreated the boxes within Mail.app. I have changed settings and restarted Mail.app about a million times. All to no avail. The security certificate "can't be verified" either but that's another issue so please focus on the IMAP aspect of this specifically. I'll create another post for the security certificate.

The server uses cPanel but the "automatically configure your mail client," never works so I wasn't expecting anything impressive when I tried that either. It's nice you acknowledge that Macs exist, I do appreciate that, you just don't script the configuration setup correctly so it didn't work. I have also checked the Apple boards to see if they had any reports of the IMAP clients not communicating correctly and I didn't find anything there either.

I am at my wit's end and I have been unable to find other people with precisely this problem within the boards. If anyone can shed any light on the matter I'd appreciate it.

The most common message is:

==
There may be a problem with the mail server or network. Check the settings for account “MailUser” or try again.

The server error encountered was: The attempt to read data from the server “mail.mydomain.com” failed.
==

By the way, despite this message, everything seems to show up locally through Mail.app. I plan to post this at the Apple forums as well.

Thank you for your time.

Paul

[category99]

The problem you are having is probably because Apple's Mail.app opens up 4 or 5 connections per IMAP account and uses the IMAP IDLE command (as of 10.5) so it uses 4 or 5 processes. So either the IMAP server has restricted the connections to 4 or so per IP address, or you are running into per user resource limits on the cPanel server.

I would like to find a way to get Apple Mail to play nicer - I don't see any reason why an IMAP client would need 4 or more connections opened all the time.

[Gene Steinberg]

The problem you are having is probably because Apple's Mail.app opens up 4 or 5 connections per IMAP account and uses the IMAP IDLE command (as of 10.5) so it uses 4 or 5 processes. So either the IMAP server has restricted the connections to 4 or so per IP address, or you are running into per user resource limits on the cPanel server.

I would like to find a way to get Apple Mail to play nicer - I don't see any reason why an IMAP client would need 4 or more connections opened all the time.

Just open up WHM and up the settings in Courier IMAP for simultaneous logins from a single IP and these problems will be history. Don't forget to restart the server, and doubling or tripling the numbers won't hurt. Or switch to Dovecot, which is better able to handle this. But I have had a horror of a time with Dovecot on my AMD-based 64-bit server (though a recent kernel update might fix that).