Outlook 2002 and "closed connection" errors

[Ken Murchison]

Doug Koobs wrote:

> Occasionally on Outlook 2000 and 2002 clients, I'm getting messages that the
> IMAP server has closed the connection. I'm using cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-1
> (installed from Simon's RPM)
> 
> I've done lots of searching, and it looks like many people have had this
> problem. However, there doesn't seem to be any resolution (other than not
> using MS products). My understanding is that Outlook tries to open multiple
> connections to the IMAP server, which goes against the RFC standard.

This is definitely NOT against any RFC.  Most client should and do use 
multiple connections.

> Is there anyway to fix this? I hope to fix this before Monday, that's when
> the server goes live. I'll do a network sniff and see if I can capture some
> useful info...

My guess is that you're seeing the bug with Outlook's IDLE 
implementation.  The client is probably sitting IDLE for more than 30 
minutes, which causes the server to timeout on the connection.

 From RFC 2177:

    The server MAY consider a client inactive if it has an IDLE command
    running, and if such a server has an inactivity timeout it MAY log
    the client off implicitly at the end of its timeout period.  Because
    of that, clients using IDLE are advised to terminate the IDLE and
    re-issue it at least every 29 minutes to avoid being logged off.
    This still allows a client to receive immediate mailbox updates even
    though it need only "poll" at half hour intervals.


You can try to solve this by either disabling the IDLE command in Cyrus 
(set imapidlepoll to 0 (zero)) or increasing the timeout value (set 
timeout to 60, 90, etc).
-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
--PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp