dovecot - Nov 2005 - New Fedora/Sendmail Install Assistance

Hello everyone,

I've narrowed down my problem, so this should be an easy one for some smart
person out there.

I am moving from an old sendmail/Fedora 2 box to a new sendmail/Fedora 4 box
and want to try Dovecot for pop3.  The problem is, I can't get it to work.
I have 9000 email accounts I will be moving to the new box.  I've already
tried and failed once.  The problem is, Dovecot wants a home directory for
each one.  We don't use home directories.  So, when I try to pop one of the
accounts that was moved over, /var/log/maillog shows:

Nov  1 14:33:47 sendmail pop3(chayes):
mkdir_parents(/home/chayes/mail/.imap/INBOX) failed: Permission denied
Nov  1 14:33:47 sendmail pop3(chayes): Couldn't open INBOX: Internal error
occured. Refer to server log for more information. [2005-11-01 14:33:47]

-or-

Nov  1 14:29:18 sendmail pop3(chayes): mbox: Can't create root IMAP folder
/home/chayes/mail: Permission denied
Nov  1 14:29:18 sendmail pop3(chayes): Failed to create storage with data:
mbox:/var/spool/mail/chayes

********

But if I create folders /home/chayes/ and /home/chayes/mail with user and
group set to chayes, then it works.

By the way, I've tried about 20 different iterations of the default_mail_env
parameter.  This is the one I'm using at the moment:

default_mail_env = mbox:/var/spool/mail/%u

Bottom line is, if Dovecot has to have a home directory, then I guess I'll
have to go back to pop3d, which doesn't.

Thanks,

Cliff

Cliff Hayes wrote:
> tried and failed once.  The problem is, Dovecot wants a home directory for
> each one.  We don't use home directories.  So, when I try to pop one of
You didn't tell which version of dovecot you want to use or how your auth
config looks like...

With the test/alpha versions, this works fine (using maildir and the users
in a plain text file):

default_mail_env = maildir:%h/./Maildir/

auth default {
 ...
  passdb passwd-file {
    # relative to the chrooted directory!
    args = /passwd
  }

  userdb static {
    args = uid=103 gid=104 home=/var/spool/vmail/%Lu
  }
 ...

Please keep list traffic on the list!

Cliff Hayes wrote:
> We are using Dovecot 0.99.14
Ok. Haven't used this for quite a while, so I don't know if I can really
help you.
> auth_userdb = passwd
> auth_passdb = shadow
Dovecot uses the homedir that's in your passwd then.

But I wonder how you want to use IMAP. AFAIK, it needs a separate
directory for every user anyway. At least the indexes etc. have to be
stored somewhere.

You should really read doc/mail-storages.txt: "mbox storage requires an
IMAP root directory where to store IMAP folders and some other
information..."

I you can't provide a directory for every user, dovecot is probably not
the software for you.