In VPS web hosting or dedicated server managed by cPanel control panel, webmasters or server administrators may encounters the problem that POP3 service is down, and unable to be started. This is despite manual attempt to restart POP3 mail service which essential for email downloading from cPanel WebHost Manager (WHM). The restart POP3 action will return the following error result message.

Restarting Pop3

Attempting to restart cppop
Waiting for cppop to restart…. . . . . . . . . . . finished.

cppop status

couriertcpd is disabled
Service: [cppop] has been disabled by the sys admin

If you have configure cPanel alert email address, pager, AIM and ICQ contact information and configure alert priority assignment to send you notification whenever a service is down or failed with monitoring enabled in Service Manager, you will receive many emails or alerts saying that the service has been restarted automagically, but no magic this time, as the service is still not started automatically.

pop on host.techjourney.net failed

pop failed @ Fri Aug 10 14:36:27 2007. A restart was attempted automagically.

This error symptom happens most likely because of IMAP service has been disabled in cPanel. The solution is easy. To solve the unable to start or restart POP3 server service, simply go to WHM -> Service Manager (Service Configuration section), and then select (tick) IMAP under the column “Enabled”. Now try to restart the POP server mail service.