Package: dovecot-imapd Version: 1:1.0.15-2.3 Severity: important Dovecot imapd terminates itself deliberately if the system clock moves backwards. This is the same underlying issue as bug 420175, but that was a laptop after a suspend and was deemed unimportant because of that.
This occurs on a XEN based virtual private server at a commercial hosting facility. Jan 7 04:54:49 xxx dovecot: Time just moved backwards by 81 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards A timebomb like this renders dovecot unsuitable for use on servers as all email clients will be unable to connect to the mail server until an administrator discovers the problem and restarts the mail server. The upstream wiki mentioned in the syslog message suggests runing ntpd on a XEN domU can cause this. This is not the case with this occurence. No ntp or clock setting code is running in the domU. Upstream appears unwilling to address the problem, per the same wiki page. They never want a file to have a timestamp in the future. I'm not sure how stopping protects from that, but that is their position. Possible resolutions could be: - wrap the dovecot daemon in a script that restarts it in this case. - warn administrators that they are installing a fragile solution during install. -- System Information: Debian Release: 5.0 APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-xen-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages dovecot-imapd depends on: ii dovecot-common 1:1.0.15-2.3 secure mail server that supports m ii libc6 2.7-16 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libssl0.9.8 0.9.8g-14 SSL shared libraries dovecot-imapd recommends no packages. dovecot-imapd suggests no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
