[Dovecot] Server power loss and "Dovecot is already running with PID xxx"

[Timo Sirainen]

On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 00:14 +0300, Pekka Savola wrote:
> $ /sbin/service dovecot start
> Starting Dovecot Imap: Error: Dovecot is already running with PID 10825
> (read from /var/run/dovecot/master.pid)
> Fatal: Invalid configuration in /etc/dovecot.conf
>                                                             [FAILED]
> (Note: there is nothing wrong in the configuration file so the error 
> message is somewhat misleading.)

Yes, it's a bit misleading. But I don't think I'll bother fixing it
before rewriting the master/config handling for v2.0.

> Is this already a known problem?
> Should the start-up logic be made more robust (e.g. check whether a 
> process corresponding to the PID actually exists)?

It already checks if the PID exists, but it doesn't check what that
process is (and I don't think there is a portable way to do it anyway).
I don't think it's too much to ask to delete the master.pid if in rare
situations it fails to start due to a PID conflict.

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