Problems with pop3d

[Fabian Hellmundt]

>> Hello everyone,
>>  we're setting up a new mailserver for our local school and had chosen 
>> cyrus for imap/pop3. The point is that everything works fine (the whole 
>> authentication thing with sasl etc...) except the pop3d: At first pop3d 
>> works, connecting to port 110 it shows the banner and your're able to 
>> authenticate. But after authenticating and quitting and trying a secound 
>> time, the connection can be established indeed, but you don't get the 
>> greeting banner of the pop3d. It seems to be a dead connection. Moreover 
>> you get a zombie-pop3d-process every time you try to connect. And if you 
>> wait a random time, cyrus seems to "heal" itself and everything works 
>> fine again.
>
> Your server is most likely running out of entropy for OpenSSL to produce 
> an APOP challenge, which appears in the banner.  You'll have to find a way 
> to provide OpenSSL with suitable entropy, or disable APOP by setting 
> allowapop:off in imapd.conf.
>
>
> -- 
> Kenneth Murchison
> Systems Programmer
> Carnegie Mellon University
>
I have just disabled apop and everything works fine.. Thank you! But 
honestly I don't really understand why it works now. What is meant by an 
entropy? I didn't find a suitable translation in my dictionaries :-)