[fetchmail-users] Socket error with IMAP

[Jean-Luc W. <jl+...@li...>]

Hi,

I run fetchmail as a daemon to poll an IMAP server which implements the 
IDLE command. For some reason, I'm getting a lot of "socket error" which 
very rarely happened before (when I was using POP3).

The error occurs when an email is received and the server sends 
fetchmail a notification:

Jun 10 14:57:03 hostname fetchmail[4951]: re-poll failed
Jun 10 14:57:03 hostname fetchmail[4951]: socket error while fetching 
from imap.isp.com
Jun 10 14:57:03 hostname fetchmail[4951]: Query status=2 (SOCKET)
Jun 10 14:57:03 hostname fetchmail[4951]: sleeping at Sun Jun 10 
14:57:03 2007
Jun 10 14:58:03 hostname fetchmail[4951]: awakened at Sun Jun 10 
14:58:03 2007
Jun 10 15:11:31 hostname fetchmail[4951]: 1 message for m38549482-5 at 
imap.1and1.com.
Jun 10 15:11:32 hostname fetchmail[4951]: reading message 
use...@im...:1 of 1 (1602 header octets)
Jun 10 15:11:32 hostname fetchmail[4951]:  (1689 body octets)
Jun 10 15:11:32 hostname fetchmail[4951]:  flushed

It seems, fetchmail poll the server every 28 minutes if no email 
notification was received (and the same pbm happens).

I've checked the FAQ and I don't think the isp uses virtual server names 
and round-robin, but I can't be sure about this.

As you can see from these logs, the polling interval is 60 seconds which 
means I was getting my emails 1 minute late. To workaround this problem, 
I've set the polling interval to 1 second.

Any ideas why this is happening?

Thanks,

Jean-Luc