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My Ubuntu is set to run ntp before dovecot at startup. (See my earlier question: The rc0.d,rc1.d,... directories in /etc)

However, I suspect that dovecot may have finished executing before ntp finished (even if the ntp started executing earlier).

What logs should I look at to find out whether this was the case?

(In case you're interested: The reason for my suspicion is a message like this in /var/log/mail.log when I rebooted my machine (it had been a long time since the last reboot):

dovecot: Fatal: Time just moved backwards by 43 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now.

This was fixed by rebooting the machine again, providing further support for my suspicion.)

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roger.james
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    I'm inclined to think that your internet was lagging or not ready while booting, which made ntp updates the clock pretty late and caused dovecot to exit. – Braiam Jul 20 '13 at 15:23

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ntp writes to the system log file (could be either daemon.log or syslog.log) any error or warning message. It could be changed in the configuration file ntp.conf using the logfile /path/to/file.log or the -l switch while starting.

Braiam
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