I am trying to connect to my server (Red Hat 9) to check mail and am not able to connect to it at all. I did netstat and imap and smtp are both running

[root root]# netstat -ap
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 *:32768 *:* LISTEN 2226/rpc.statd
tcp 0 0 *:imap *:* LISTEN 4633/xinetd
tcp 0 0 *:sunrpc *:* LISTEN 2207/portmap
tcp 0 0 *:http *:* LISTEN 21119/httpd
tcp 0 0 *:x11 *:* LISTEN 2572/X
tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN 2323/sshd
tcp 0 0 *:smtp *:* LISTEN 21526/sendmail: acc
tcp 0 0 *:https *:* LISTEN 21119/httpd
....


is there something else I should check or do?

Thanks,
kihtap

So doing a `telnet your_mail_server 25` doesn't connect?

Is your firewall is blocking the packets?

I did telnet and I got the sendmail response. So its not being blocked, but when i attempt to connect to it from outlook I cant connect to it.

Outlook is probably using imap, so I'd double-check that you've got the right settings there.

To find out what's going wrong, I'd try running tcpdump to sniff the packets which are actually being sent.

Worst comes to worst, you could always build up a debugging version of imapd. The combination of these two efforts ought to nail the problem.

I tried setting up 2 accounts one with imap and one with pop3. It seems that imap works but I am getting some error with pop3 -->

Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity. Account: 'example.com', Server: 'example.com', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800CCC0F

I also tried doing 'tcpdump [ipaddress of my outlook computer]' but I get some parsing error. What is the command I should use for tcpdump?

how can I debug imapd?

Thanks!

If your network connections are coming through on eth0 (say), you'd do something like:

tcpdump -i eth0 port 143

That should show you all traffic on the imap port. See the man page for how to get more info, if needed.

To debug imapd, just grab a copy of the source code. While I haven't worked with the imapd source myself, all (or mostly all) of these daemons have the ability to be built with various levels debugging, as well as being run in the foreground. This is what the developers typically use.

You should read through the docs and the source code to see how to enable these features.

If the source doesn't have enhanced debugging and/or foreground output, then you'll need to put this in yourself.