Re: How to monitor IMAP protocol?

Hello Marc,

The Spring server is definitly not my cup of tea but I will try helping.

  => Which James release are you running exactly?

  => Just in case provide a James thread dump when the issue arise 
(jstack PID)...

Also moder Spring versions uses Log4J 2 , whose configuration do not 
follow the syntax shown here. CF 
https://github.com/apache/james-project/blob/james-project-3.7.4/server/apps/spring-app/src/main/resources/log4j2.xml

Hope it helps...

Best regards,

Benoit TELLIER

On 02/05/2023 11:15, Marc Chamberlin wrote:
> Hi Benoit, and thanks a million for your reply.  Yes, I have used 
> telnet to make a connection on both the imap and smtp ports that my 
> Apache James email server is listening on. I have successfully 
> simulated sending and receiving emails by manually typing in the 
> appropriate commands with lots of joy! Seems to work OK when making 
> telnet connections just fine.
>
> However, what I am seeing when using Thunderbird as an email client, 
> is that when doing something multiple times, the connection and 
> commands work for a little while then things freeze up. For example, 
> when fetching emails from the imap service, I get a few emails and 
> then it hangs up. Ditto for running filters, the filters run for a 
> bit, move a few emails, then hangs up. I don't know what the magic is, 
> for getting back on track reliably, either. Sometimes restarting James 
> and/or Thunderbird does the trick, but more often it keeps on failing 
> for awhile and when I come back later it is running OK again. (again 
> for a little while) So I would like to see what is going on with the 
> imap and smtp communication layer itself to see if I can get any ideas.
>
> I have looked at the Apache James log files also, of course, and no 
> joy discovering anything useful yet. One thing I do note is that only 
> the james-server.log and the wrapper.log files contain any 
> information. There are other files created, such as an imapserver.log 
> file, but it does not contain anything. I wonder if I have a 
> misconfiguration somewhere that is not allowing logging info to be 
> directed to these other files. I can't find any thing wrong with my 
> configuration files either, so for now I have set that problem aside 
> while I try to pursue the more serious problem of some kind of a 
> spotty connection issue. Maybe getting those other log files working 
> would provide me with the information I need to solve this?
>
> I also see in the two log files that do contain information, exception 
> errors with walk-back stack traces, but those seem unrelated to what I 
> am doing at the time. (I get a LOT of bots doing brute force attacks 
> against my server and a lot of these exception errors seem to be 
> related to those attacks.)
>
> I am using the Spring wiring for Apache James, and believe with log4j 
> logging. I will show the relevant property setting from the 
> log4j.properties files for the imap service. Why nothing is showing up 
> in the imapserver.log file is above my pay grade to grok.
>
> log4j.appender.IMAPSERVER=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
> log4j.appender.IMAPSERVER.File=../log/imapserver.log
> log4j.appender.IMAPSERVER.DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd
> log4j.appender.IMAPSERVER.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
> log4j.appender.IMAPSERVER.layout.ConversionPattern=%-5p 
> %d{HH:mm:ss,SSS} | %c | %m%n
> ... more stuff not shown here
> log4j.logger.james=DEBUG, CONS, FILE
> log4j.logger=DEBUG, CONS, FILE
> ... more stuff not shown here
> log4j.logger.james.imapserver=DEBUG, IMAPSERVER
>
> HTH...  Marc
>
>
> On 5/1/23 08:14, Benoit TELLIER wrote:
>> Hello Mark
>>
>>  -> James should output error logs. Be it logback for Guice or Log4J 
>> for spring
>>  -> Our arsenal also have awesome metrics integrated wit Prometheux 
>> stack (guice only) or in logs
>>
>> For your case, have you tried some commands yourself in telnet? I 
>> suspect a connection problem, for instance firewall...
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Benoit
>>
>> On 01/05/2023 00:19, Marc Chamberlin wrote:
>>> Hello, After doing a bit or reorganization of where the location of 
>>> installation files for Apache James, and or some updates I received 
>>> from Linux OpenSuSE 15.3 x64, something broke and I am now 
>>> experiencing some behavioral issues with my Thunderbird client -
>>>
>>> Thunderbird - version 91.11.0 (64-bit)
>>> Apache James - version 3.4
>>>
>>> For example, I cannot seem to move some emails out of my Inbox 
>>> folder, and put them in another sub-folder. I don't see any error 
>>> messages, either from Thunderbird itself, nor in any of the log 
>>> files from the Apache James server. And the moved emails do 
>>> disappears from the Inbox folder temporarily only to reappear back 
>>> in the Inbox folder a little later. Another symptom that has show up 
>>> is Thunderbird keeps reporting that it cannot save a copy of my 
>>> draft emails while I am composing it.
>>>
>>> So my question is, what is the best way to monitor the IMAP protocol 
>>> communication that is going on between my Thunderbird email client, 
>>> and the Apache James server? Can I capture it via the log files for 
>>> Apache James or must I learn how to use a low level network monitor 
>>> such as Wireshark? If the latter, are there any gurus around to show 
>>> me how to capture just the IMAP communication?
>>>
>>> As always, much appreciate any thoughts and advise and thanks for 
>>> taking the time to help me!    Marc C
>>
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