I'm using mutt to access three different accounts via IMAP over an SSH tunnel. Because I have three separate accounts (on two different servers), I'm using three different preconnect strings and three different ssh tunnels. Here's an example of one:
#tunnel over ssh unset preconnect set preconnect="ssh -f -C -q -L 1432:mail.myserver.com:143 \ mail.myserver.com sleep 5" The other tunnels are on 1430 and 1431, in case that matters. This works great, for the most part. However, when switching back and forth between mailboxes (via a macro), I will get an error message in mutt saying, "Connection to localhost closed". I can switch back to the account from which I just came, but I have to restart mutt to be able to get into any other accounts. When this problem occurs, if I suspend mutt and telnet to localhost:1432, I get a response from the IMAP server, just like I'd expect, so the ssh tunnel is still there and working fine. Thus, I think this is a mutt problem. I've tried increasing the sleep 5 value, even though I doubt that's the problem. I'm not sure what else to try. I cannot reliably reproduce this problem, but it seems to be related to long periods of inactvity on an account. However, I've left an account for 45 minutes at a time, come back and accessed it just fine, while other times, I can't access the account after 15 minutes of inactivity. In each and every case, however, when I've tried telnetting to the local tunnel port, I've *always* received a response from the imap server. Any suggestions? --kurt
