dovecot - Dec 2012 - Error: unlink_directory(.../lucene-indexes) with doveadm index

Hi,

Per discussion on this previous thread:
http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/2012-October/068849.html

I am updating search indexes on all my mailboxes via a nightly cronjob that
runs: doveadm index -A '*'

The problem we're running into is that random mailboxes will throw the
following error during the update (sanitized to conceal actual domain name):

doveadm(user at domain.com): Error:
unlink_directory(/var/spool/mail/domain.com/user/sdbox/lucene-indexes)
failed: Permission denied

We have around 250 domains on the server, with a handful of mailboxes on
average in each domain.  We get this for a varying number of total mailboxes
(1 to 6 every night).  It is common for the same mailbox to show up a few
days in a row and then stop throwing the error.  The script is running as
root, so there shouldn't be any file level permissions.

Any thoughts on the root cause of these errors?  What can I provide to help
further diagnose?

Thanks,
Fred Kilbourn

On Wed, 2012-12-05 at 05:08 -0600, Fred Kilbourn wrote:
> I am updating search indexes on all my mailboxes via a nightly cronjob that
> runs: doveadm index -A '*'
> 
> The problem we're running into is that random mailboxes will throw the
> following error during the update (sanitized to conceal actual domain
name):
> 
> doveadm(user at domain.com): Error:
> unlink_directory(/var/spool/mail/domain.com/user/sdbox/lucene-indexes)
> failed: Permission denied
> 
> We have around 250 domains on the server, with a handful of mailboxes on
> average in each domain.  We get this for a varying number of total
mailboxes
> (1 to 6 every night).  It is common for the same mailbox to show up a few
> days in a row and then stop throwing the error.  The script is running as
> root, so there shouldn't be any file level permissions.
Try if this works: doveadm index -A -q '*'

This way the indexing is done by indexer processes with proper
permissions. Although I wonder if it floods the indexer processes too
quickly with the commands if there are a lot of users..