10.3 Mail – SSL fails for IMAP, Works for SMTP

but it USED to work for several months.

I was logged into the server via terminal, and noticed several python threads running. Upon investigation, it looked like someone was trying to use mailman to execute system commands. Did not look like it was succesful, but I am not running mailing lists on that box so I decided to turn off mailman altogether…. so I did this via the Tiger 10.4 server admin (the server is 10.3.7)

Within a few minutes users began to complain of not being able to check email. I was able to send a message ok – but it never arrived. Messages were being rejected because of a “error on line 18”

After some poking around I determined it was imapd.conf where the error was, and it was an empty value for the tls_ca_file_content argument.

I couldnt find another meaningful line 18 in a config file and the empty value just looked wrong so I used the (local, panther) gui to turn off TLS/SSL and the error changed to line 14 – the same line – orphaned setting?

I manually deleted it and then people could check their email…. but of course only if they had SSL off, and the travellers mostly had it on – so of course I sent them all an email to turn it off…

I have TLS/SSL turned back on (local, panther GUI), and it works fine for SMTP – but never connects for IMAP/POP3

Any ideas where to look next?