A process to a kill.

Since one of the more recent updates, (I wish I could pinpoint the exact one) when starting up Mail.app multiple processes are opened on my web hosting company’s (blueHOST.com) server. Most times between 8-10. The big problem is they won’t die until either I close Mail.app or kill the process manually via my cPanel’s process manager. As a single user in a one man company, this doesn’t really effect me. In an office of 3 or more people this is a BIG issue. Especially if their website or blog is hosted by the same company, on the same server.

I discovered this issue while working on a clients website. Each time I tried to connect to their blog I’d get a server side page that said, to many processes try again later. Or something to that effect. I called blueHOST.com but got a 1st level tech who had to put me on hold, ask someone questions then come back with not many answers. To be fair to blueHOST this was an exception to always stellar tech support.

I ended up doing my own research. I called my client, had them quit Mail.app on all 3 computers in that office. I went to their cPanel & killed any remaining processes. I then screen shared with each computer & started each remotely. For each user relaunched they created around 8 + processes each. And these IMAP processes would not die until Mail was quit, or killed manually. There were some IMAP processes that didn’t die and had to be killed manually.

I called BlueHost again today and got an amazing tech. I again explained the issue to him. “How odd” he said, “let’s see what we can find.” So we spent 30 minutes on the phone trying many different things. He on his end and me on mine. I even tried Entourage using IMAP. Entourage only opened 1 connection, and that was it. No multiples.

In searching Apple Support Forum I found this thread “Topic : Mail is killing the processes on my server with IMAP” talking about the very same issue. There were multiple people with different web hosting companies reporting the same behavior. So I’m not alone in this and the problem does indeed exist. The thread showed no “solution” to the issue yet. Bummer!

Now I hope Apple is listening, and fixes the issue very soon.

(I also sent this to MacFixtIt)

Category: Apple / Issues / Macintosh / OS X 10.5 / eMail

1. Mail.app & IMAP Process Update « eMac Consulting
2. Snow Leopard – Mail.app – PHP … Fail! « eMac Consulting