outlook mail issue...pop3 keeps asking for password

[firebit]

i'm having an issue i just can't resolve for a client thats on a VPS. whenever he checks his email, on all accounts, he gets the password box over and over. he inputs the correct username/password and it isn't working for me either, so its definitely a pop3 or server problem. its happening on all domains on his VPS and i tried to stop/start xinetd along with CPanel but it doesn't fix it...does anyone have an idea how to fix this? i also tried to set the pop3 to disabled on all files in /etc/xinetd.d/ but that causes the pop3 port to go down completely.

the error message is this:

There was a problem logging onto your mail server. Your Password was rejected. Account: 'mail.-----------.com', Server: 'mail.-----------.com', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR Authentication failed (bad password?)', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800CCC92

[webignition]

What POP server are you running?

If it is not the cPanel-supplied POP server (either cppop for mbox or courier pop for maildir) then things aren't going to work so well.

If your using the maildir format, you could ensure that courier pop is running correctly by running /scripts/courierup --force

[firebit]

its running maildir and i just ran the forced update command above but its still showing the same error

[webignition]

And you are entering the username as the full email address?

[firebit]

yes... tried both as well..

[RizyDeWino]

Please do a :
telnet localhost 110
on your server and paste the result here.

[firebit]

that's it:

root@hello [/]# telnet localhost 110
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK

[GeekPatrolMille]

This just happened on my server about 30 minutes ago... Progressively it seems to be getting worse. I get in the /var/log/maillog the message "Cannot find a valid mailbox for <username>" for each username that is affected currently.

My account has yet to be affected...
any ideas?

I can also telnet to the pop3 server:

+OK POP3 ls05 [cppop 20.0] at [65.xx.yy.zz]

[GeekPatrolMille]

running /scripts/courierup --force solved the issue for me.

Thanks
webignition

[firebit]

running /scripts/courierup --force solved the issue for me.

Thanks
webignition

triwed that, update worked fine but pop3 still not working.

[firebit]

could this be the devil?

root@hello [/]# lsof -i TCP:110
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
xinetd 12991 root 5u IPv4 483261733 TCP *op3 (LISTEN)
root@hello [/]#

[firebit]

just went back to non-maildir and now its showing:

root@hello [/]# lsof -i TCP:110
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
cppop 22829 root 4u IPv4 494106299 TCP *op3 (LISTEN)
root@hello [/]#

still no pop3 working though

[GeekPatrolMille]

I do not know if we had the same problem or not. My issue was centered around CPPOP the cPanel POP3 daemon which began acting oddly at first, users could connect and the logs showed connections but it was not finding the users inbox in the mail folder, even though it was there. During most of this time I was able to get a telnet connection on port 110 to test. Finally the daemon stopped allowing connections at all. Numerous pop server restarts and a couple of rebuilds as suggested by webignition and magically it started working again just as suddenly as it began having issues. All mail was in-tact and no other problem, outside the steady stream of support calls, we were back up.

Good luck, hope you find a solution...

[GeekPatrolMille]

mine looks more like this...

root@ls05 [/home/agbsm/mail]# lsof -i TCP:110
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
couriertc 19899 root 3u IPv4 259386252 TCP *op3 (LISTEN)

[dave9000]

if your running EDGE 21 there is a maildir bug that will prevent you from logging into pop server

there is a new EDGE 23 out that fixes that issue