On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 16:30 +0000, Anne Wilson wrote: > > > > > > That looks a bit odd. Apart from that, I can't see anything relevant. > > > > ---- > > the first 4 lines of /etc/hosts should look like this and apparently, > > yours doesn't... > > > > # head -n 4 /etc/hosts > > # Do not remove the following line, or various programs > > # that require network functionality will fail. > > 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost > > > > ::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6 > > > > Fix this first > > > They do look exactly like that :-) > > Two minutes ago the problem was solved. Sheer stupidity. I had forgotten to > chkconfig on. Dovecot is now running and it looks as though I can now > continue with preparing the account to take over the work. > > Thanks to all who tried to help. ---- glad you fixed it this is what I was responding to... > > > # telnet localhost 110 > > > .. > > > # telnet localhost 143 > > > .. > > > > Both these produce ''Temporary failure in name resolution'. so it seemed obvious that at some point, you had a defective /etc/hosts because if dovecot were not running, that wouldn't be the message. For example, this is what happens when I do this from a CentOS 5 server that isn't running POP3/IMAP server... # telnet localhost 110 Trying 127.0.0.1... telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused # telnet localhost 143 Trying 127.0.0.1... telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused Craig