[imp] Individual messages taking 77 seconds to open.

[Joseph Mays]

I’m working on a server that is using, in production what is admittedly a very old version of horde imp. Still, the server has been there unchanged for a few years. A strange problem has developed in one aspect of horde imp in the last couple of months, though.

Everything about the server is fine, except that some users (not all) are having a problem when it comes to clicking on a message in the inbox and opening it. Opening the message takes almost exactly (I have timed it with a stopwatch many times) 77 seconds to open. Every other aspect of the horde server works fine and responds immediately.

I have tried calling the horde imp webmail interface through both ssl and non ssl versions. Both have the same problem. We have a squirrelmail webmail interface that works with the same imap server. It does not have this problem. We have other imap interfaces that work fine. The problem is just some users of the horde imp software, and specifically only with calling message.php through horde.

I have put wireshark on the browser system and watched the communication. The get request for message.php is sent immediately by the server when the link is clicked in the inbox. The server acks the response, but the get request does not show up in the webserver logs. Then, for 77 seconds, nothing apparently happens on either the client or server side (except for the sidebar.php refreshes, which work fine through this whole process). Then, 77 seconds later, the get request appears in the webserver log, is responded to immediately, and the message appears in the browser interface.

I have been going through every timeout I can find, php.ini, ssl, the horde imp configuaration, nothing makes any difference. The webserver seems to be processing *something* in message.php, timing out, and then going ahead and sending the message.

At this point I would be happy to hear any ideas someone might have.

I’ve set php to E_ALL for logging, nothing appears in the webserver access or error logs beyond the http exchange.