Tuesday, September 12, 2006
“Why'd it have to be Outlook?”
For the past two weeks or so one of our customers (with a dedicated
server) has been having trouble either sending emails or receiving emails
(or both!). The customer in question uses Microsoft Lookout
Outlook (of course—sigh) so Smirk has been looking into the issue and
couldn't for the life of him get Outlook to work.
Yes.
Webmail?
Yes.
Outlook?
He spent so much time he decided to reinstall the server (there are some other issues with the server—namely centered around the control panel Ravencore) and start over with a fresh slate.
I had just finished installing a new server when P asked if this was the customer that had the security audit.
Oh.
Um.
XXXX!
I then talked with Smirk to get an exact clarification of the problem and it's a problem with one (1) email account. Just one. Everything else works fine. So Smirk left it up to me—if I could fix the original server, fine. Or if I could get the new server working, fine. Just get it working.
I did some tests on the original server and checked the logs.
Sep 12 16:31:23 XXXXXXXXX dovecot: POP3(XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX): pop3_uidl_format setting is missing from config file
pop3_uidl_format? What's that all about?
# POP3 UIDL format to use. You can use following variables: # # %v - Mailbox UIDVALIDITY # %u - Mail UID # %m - MD5 sum of the mailbox headers in hex (mbox only) # %f - filename (maildir only) # # If you want UIDL compatibility with other POP3 servers, use: # UW's ipop3d : %08Xv%08Xu # Courier version 0 : %f # Courier version 1 : %u # Courier version 2 : %v-%u # Cyrus (<= 2.1.3) : %u # Cyrus (>= 2.1.4) : %v.%u # Older Dovecots : %v.%u # # Note that Outlook 2003 seems to have problems with %v.%u format which was # Dovecot's default, so if you're building a new server it would be a good # idea to change this. %08Xu%08Xv should be pretty fail-safe. # # NOTE: Nowadays this is required to be set explicitly, since the old # default was bad but it couldn't be changed without breaking existing # installations. %08Xu%08Xv will be the new default, so use it for new # installations. # #pop3_uidl_format =
Outlook.
Why'd it have to be snakes Outlook?
Needless to say, it worked after making the required configuration change (and then it was getting it so that the control panel wouldn't wipe out said configuration change)
