[TriLUG] email (imap) setup question

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Mon, 2002-12-30 at 10:19, Henryk M. Kowalski wrote:

> 
> Looking at the firewall logs I noticed that each time I tried to login to 
> check my email the mail server was trying to connect to my client machine 
> on port 113 (auth) and would sit there until it timed out.  Once I opened 
> the port to allow the connection the problems with the connection 
> went away and my email clients are happy and very responsive.  
> I get instant connectivity to my email.
> 
> I'm curious, because this (open 113 port) doesn't seem to be necessary 
> when accessing other (external) email servers.
> What am I missing?
> Is my imapd misconfigured?
> If so, where/what do I need to change?
> Is there a reason to avoid the open 113 port from my DMZ?
> 

Port 113 is used for auth/ident, which is a service that gives the Unix
userid for the originator of a TCP/IP connection.  It's commonly used by
IRC but other services sometimes try to use it.  Since your IMAPD is
probably being "spawned" by either xinetd or inetd, check the [x]inetd
configuration to turn off ident, and also check the configuration of
your IMAP server.  (UW IMAP, which is the standard imapd in Red Hat
Linux, doesn't use ident but other server brands may.)

Hope this helps,
Jeremy