Authentication rejections with POP/IMAP

[BryanDH]

Hello!

I have a early 2008 Xserve (dual quad 3 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Promise Vtrak RAID) that I have provisioned as our departmental email server (a big upgrade from our previous G5 Xserve Panther server). The new server was a fresh install of Leopard 10.5.2, and the mail data was migrated from the old server with no issues. The server is bound to an OD domain consisting of a master and one replica, both running at 10.4.11 fully patched.

Since the move, the mail server works fine….mostly. I have a couple of nagging issues with directory services that cause logins to be rejected. I was hoping to see these go away when I applied the 10.5.3 update, but they are still occurring. Here are the details.

For the most part, things will run smoothly throughout the day, and then I’ll start seeing authentication and directory info lookup errors at seemingly random times:

May 30 02:05:48 physics imaps[1295]: AOD: check pass: cannot open user directory node for user: caconger (-14071)

May 30 10:32:47 physics imaps[12695]: AOD: authentication error: cannot open user directory node for user: logs (-14071)
May 30 10:33:08 physics imaps[11060]: AOD: authentication error: cannot open user directory node for user: kbyrd (-14071)

May 30 09:57:15 physics pop3s[15920]: AOD: crypt authentication error: authentication failed for user: adiza (-14090)
May 30 10:18:32 physics imaps[16506]: AOD: crypt authentication error: authentication failed for user: williams (-14090)

The errors will occur at various times for different users. On the client side, they will get a password rejection error, then if they attempt to login again, maybe 2 or 3 more tries, then they will authenticate be on their way.

One other issue I have is with VM usage of the DirectoryService process.

May 28 09:48:03 physics DirectoryService[61624]: Potential VM growth in DirectoryService since client PID: 0, has 525 open references when the warning limit is 500.
May 28 09:48:29 physics DirectoryService[61624]: Potential VM growth in DirectoryService since client PID: 0, has 525 open references when the warning limit is 500.
May 28 09:48:30 physics DirectoryService[61624]: Potential VM growth in DirectoryService since client PID: 0, has 525 open references when the warning limit is 500.
May 28 09:48:31 physics DirectoryService[61624]: Potential VM growth in DirectoryService since client PID: 0, has 525 open references when the warning limit is 500.
May 28 09:48:34 physics DirectoryService[61624]: Potential VM growth in DirectoryService since client PID: 0, has 525 open references when the warning limit is 500.

I see this behavior when the server is experiencing a large amount of incoming mail traffic. For example, if someone posts to a mailing list with hundreds of members. If I kill DirectoryServices and have launchd restart it, then the problem goes away.

I was wondering if anyone has experienced any similar authentication problems like I am seeing? I’m curious as to what the cause might be.

Thanks,
Bryan Hill

[Author]

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