dovecot failed to start - status 89

[Nunnsby]

Hey All

Helping hand that took me over 3 hours to solve!

If you are having problems getting dovecot to start, and you can't see errors in /var/log/mail.log, but do see errors in /var/log/syslog stating:

init: dovecot main process (xxxxx) terminated with status 89

check your dovecot config (/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf) to make sure that you have terminated ALL brackets {}. If you have an open bracket in a paragraph {, it must be terminated by at closing bracket }.

eg:

protocol pop3 {
pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv
}

This is usually the standard, but if you hack your config like I have been doing, you might miss a closing bracket somewhere. Especially in cascading paragraphs.

eg:

auth default {
mechanisms = plain login
socket listen {
client {
path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth-client
mode = 0660
user = postfix
group = postfix
}
}
}

THREE opening brackets, THREE cosing brackets.

Hope this helps someone out there! Very little results, if none, on search engines for Dovecot Error 89!

Regards, and Happy New Year All

Nunnsby

[aslok]

I have this

[aslok@3r]2011.02.05-04:51:17:~$ tail -F /var/log/syslog
Feb 5 05:11:58 3r dovecot: Dovecot v1.2.12 starting up (core dumps disabled)
Feb 5 05:11:58 3r dovecot: auth(default): Fatal: No passdbs specified in configuration file. PLAIN mechanism needs one
Feb 5 05:11:58 3r dovecot: dovecot: Fatal: Auth process died too early - shutting down
Feb 5 05:11:58 3r init: dovecot main process (23120) terminated with status 89

[Nunnsby]

Aslok, your problem definitely relates to the one line in your log:

dovecot: auth(default): Fatal: No passdbs specified in configuration file. PLAIN mechanism needs one

Check the section where it mentions passdb. This is under the following section:


##
## Authentication processes
##

It would appear that you have not selected a method of verifying Passwords, or it is not terminated properly. I am definitely NOT an expert at Dovecot by any means, in fact hardly know how it works, but check that all brackets are terminated. Sometimes they only have 2, not 3 closing brackets.

As per here:

# Password database is used to verify user's password (and nothing more).
# You can have multiple passdbs and userdbs. This is useful if you want to
# allow both system users (/etc/passwd) and virtual users to login without
# duplicating the system users into virtual database.

basically you need to tell Dovecot how to auth users. The passdb tell it what database to use for authentication.

Hope that helps.

[neca]

Hey All

Helping hand that took me over 3 hours to solve!

If you are having problems getting dovecot to start, and you can't see errors in /var/log/mail.log, but do see errors in /var/log/syslog stating:

init: dovecot main process (xxxxx) terminated with status 89

check your dovecot config (/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf) to make sure that you have terminated ALL brackets {}. If you have an open bracket in a paragraph {, it must be terminated by at closing bracket }.

Nunnsby, will you marry me?

[tylmaster]

thanks, this was a great help to me.

but it doesn't have to be necessarily a missing bracket, seems as it could be any other misconfiguration.

in our case it was a missing (commented) driver = pam in the file auth-system.conf.ext

passdb {
  #driver = pam
  # [session=yes] [setcred=yes] [failure_show_msg=yes] [max_requests=<n>]
  # [cache_key=<key>] [<service name>]
  args = mail
}