dovecot - Mar 2003 - Dotlocking doesn't work?

A Debian developer had this to say:
> >>  Files in the above dir are group mail, and the dir is group mail.
However,
> > > all binaries in /usr/lib/dovecot are root/root.  I have set them
all to g+s,
> > > and group mail, and now the imap process can lock the INBOX.
> >
>
> > imap should be the only one that needs to be setgid mail.
>
> Actually, I've looked at the dovecot source code.  There is no way
having
> setgid on the executable will work.  The source drops the privledges long
> before it tries to do a dotlock.
>
> This is an upstream problem.
>
> For now, I've disable dotlock, and use fcntl instead, as that is what
exim
> uses anyways.
Is dotlocking still  a work in progress or are we missing something here?

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at debian.org>
La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/

On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 16:04, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
> > >>  Files in the above dir are group mail, and the dir is group
mail.  However,
> > > > all binaries in /usr/lib/dovecot are root/root.  I have set
them all to g+s,
> > > > and group mail, and now the imap process can lock the INBOX.
> 
> Is dotlocking still  a work in progress or are we missing something here?
Only solution for now is to set /var/mail world-writable and sticky.

Another way would be to use more privileged process for handling lock
files. Some programs use setuid or setgid binary for that. I was
thinking that I'd let imap process request the locks from master
process. That would also allow overriding stale lock files created by
other users with shared mailboxes.