popa3d-users - Premature disconnects with Outlook

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Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 16:20:06 -0300
From: "Alexandre Sieira" <alexandre.sieira@...hertech.com.br>
To: <popa3d-users@...ts.openwall.com>
Subject: Premature disconnects with Outlook

Greetings,

I´m having some trouble with my popa3d (version 0.6.3) server. Clients who
use Outlook to check their mail get some odd timeouts, reported as
"premature disconnect" by popa3d. A sample output from the log file follows:

Oct  7 09:57:13 mail popa3d[24397]: Authentication passed for userA
Oct  7 09:57:13 mail popa3d[24397]: 0 messages (0 bytes) loaded
Oct  7 09:57:18 mail popa3d[24397]: 0 (0) deleted, 0 (0) left
Oct  7 09:58:16 mail popa3d[24399]: Authentication passed for userB
Oct  7 09:58:16 mail popa3d[24399]: 0 messages (0 bytes) loaded
Oct  7 09:58:56 mail popa3d[24401]: Authentication passed for userA
Oct  7 09:58:56 mail popa3d[24401]: 0 messages (0 bytes) loaded
Oct  7 09:59:16 mail popa3d[24399]: Premature disconnect
Oct  7 09:59:57 mail popa3d[24401]: Premature disconnect
Oct  7 10:01:16 mail popa3d[24452]: Authentication passed for userA
Oct  7 10:01:16 mail popa3d[24452]: 0 messages (0 bytes) loaded
Oct  7 10:02:21 mail popa3d[24452]: Premature disconnect
Oct  7 10:03:18 mail popa3d[24456]: Authentication passed for userB
Oct  7 10:03:18 mail popa3d[24456]: 0 messages (0 bytes) loaded
Oct  7 10:04:18 mail popa3d[24456]: Premature disconnect

        It shows one successfull session at first, followed by four
timeouts. I´m not able to establish a pattern for the timeouts. It happens
quite frequently and it does not seem to matter if the user has messages in
his mailbox or not.

        I tried using tcpdump but still couldnt see any noticeable
difference between sessions. I tried running popa3d both via xinetd and in
stand-alone mode, both authenticating via shadow and regular pam, and still
had the same results.

        This odd behavior only happens when using Outlook 2002 SP-2 or
Outlook Express. I am also using Norton SystemWorks 2002 (version 2002.05)
to scan incoming and outgoing e-mail messages. I don´t think that´s a
factor, tough, since everything works fine when using other clients, such as
Eudora or sylpheed. 
 
        I´d appreciate any suggestions on how to solve this issue.

Regards,
Alexandre

 
---
Alexandre Sieira, CISSP
Cipher Technology
(21) 2529-2629
 

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