Upgrading server from OS X 10.11.6 to macOS 10.12.1 breaks RoundCube

[ChrisJ]

I an running RoundCube against OS X Server 5.2 (now renamed to macOS Server). Previously my server was running OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan) and all was working fine. I upgraded the server OS to macOS 10.12.1 (Sierra) and now when I try and login to RoundCube WebMail, after some delay I get the error 'Connection to IMAP server failed' and I cannot login.

In the round cube error log I see this:

[29-Oct-2016 11:48:20 +0000]: <ca4qfd43> IMAP Error: Login failed for chris from 2001:470:1f09:2df:250:b6ff:fe7e:1192. Empty startup greeting (localhost:993) in /usr/local/topicdesk/roundcube/1.2.2/program/lib/Roundcube/rcube_imap.php on line 193 (POST /webmail/?_task=login&_action=login) but I don't know what it means really. I have examined the web server logs and I cannot see anything untoward in there.

Any ideas anyone?

[rm13]

Did you check at Topicdesk.com ? Looks like you have their Roundcube package installed. I do see they have a note on their site about server 5.1. Don't know if it applies.

[ChrisJ]

Yes, I checked there. I was aware of the Server 5.1 issue and I mitigated that a long time ago.  This issue is somehow related to macOS Sierra versus OS X El Capitan. My  Server version (5.2) did not change.

[John DeVolt]

It is upgrade to PHP 5.6 which breaks Roundcube. PHP 5.6 requires SSL connection and do not accept self signed certificates. The easiest way is to turn SSL off in config.inc.php file. Just add these lines:

$config['default_host'] = 'tls://localhost&#039;;

$config['imap_conn_options'] = array(
        'ssl' => array(
            'verify_peer'       => false,
            'verify_peer_name' => false,
        ),
    );

[ChrisJ]

Hi John, I tried your suggestion but it did not seem to help. Same error (after a very long delay). In the log I see this:

[08-Dec-2016 10:44:54 +0000]: <3utaejn8> IMAP Error: Login failed for XXXXX from 2001:470:1f09:2df:250:b6ff:fe7e:1192. Empty startup greeting (localhost:993) in /usr/local/topicdesk/roundcube/1.2.2/program/lib/Roundcube/rcube_imap.php on line 193 (POST /webmail/?_task=login&_action=login)

Any suggestions?

[John DeVolt]

When connection fails, try to look into mail log file via Terminal command:

tail -n 20 /Library/Logs/Mail/mail-info.log

Hopefully, it will give more clue.

[ChrisJ]

The login attempt through Roundcube takes a very long time to fail. In fact it always takes exactly 60 seconds to fail which sounds to me like some kind of timeout is firing...

The only thing that appears in the mail-info.log file is this one line which occurs at the moment the Roundcube login GUI reports the failure:

Dec 09 08:50:07 imap-login: Info: Disconnected (no auth attempts in 60 secs): user=<>, rip=::1, lip=::1, TLS handshaking: Disconnected

There is no entry on the mail-err.log file for this login attempt.

It looks to me like Roundcube is connecting to the IMAP server but is not then sending a valid login request or if it is the server is not seeing it for some reason. Is there any additional level of logging that can be enabled in Roundcube? Or anything I can try outside of Roundcube to investigate what may be going on. This used to work prior to upgrading to macOS Server 5.2 and macOS 10.12.1 (I was on the previous 5.x release and OS X 10.11.6 before that). And this mail server is continuously used by many clients, including some on the same machine, so I don't think there is any fundamental issue with the mail server itself.

[rm13]

You can enable IMAP debugging in Roundcube to get a picture of what it is talking to the IMAPserver about.

Does a different email client work? Or can you use telnet on the server itself to successfully login?