dovecot - Oct 2017 - Initialization failed: Namespace '': mkdir(/var/www/mail) failed: Permission denied

Hi,

I'm running dovecot (v?2.2.9) on ubuntu 14.04 since a long time. I did  
not change any configuration lately and I'm getting the below error  
message.

/dovecot: lda(www-data): Error: user www-data: Initialization failed:  
Namespace '':?MKDIR(/VAR/WWW/MAIL)?failed: Permission denied  
(euid=33(www-data) egid=33(www-data) missing +w perm: /var/www, dir  
owned by 1001:1001 mode=0755//)??/

I did some troubleshooting and I don't understand where  
the?MKDIR(/VAR/WWW/MAIL)?is coming from. Mailboxes are in /var/mail  
and sending/receiving emails is working as it always did.

mail_location is still setup to be?MAIL_LOCATION =  
MBOX:~/MAIL:INBOX=/VAR/MAIL/%U
?
Why is it trying a mkdir in /var/www?
?
Any help would be appreciated.

Rgs,
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On Thu, 26 Oct 2017, trash at skrilnetz.net wrote:
> /dovecot: lda(www-data): Error: user www-data: Initialization failed: 
> Namespace '':?MKDIR(/VAR/WWW/MAIL)?failed: Permission denied 
> (euid=33(www-data) egid=33(www-data) missing +w perm: /var/www, dir owned
by
> 1001:1001 mode=0755//)??/
>
> I did some troubleshooting and I don't understand where 
> the?MKDIR(/VAR/WWW/MAIL)?is coming from. Mailboxes are in /var/mail and
^^ /var/mail contains the INBOX only
> sending/receiving emails is working as it always did.
>
> mail_location is still setup to be?MAIL_LOCATION = 
> MBOX:~/MAIL:INBOX=/VAR/MAIL/%U
Everything else is in ~/MAIL (why uppercase?)
> Why is it trying a mkdir in /var/www?
Because most likely /var/www is the home directory of www-data and you've 
configured to use $HOME/MAIL as base directory, which is /var/www/mail

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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Quoting Steffen Kaiser <skdovecot at smail.inf.fh-brs.de>:
> On Thu, 26 Oct 2017, trash at skrilnetz.net wrote:
>
>> /dovecot: lda(www-data): Error: user www-data: Initialization  
>> failed: Namespace '':?MKDIR(/VAR/WWW/MAIL)?failed: Permission  
>> denied (euid=33(www-data) egid=33(www-data) missing +w perm:  
>> /var/www, dir owned by 1001:1001 mode=0755//)??/
>>
>> I did some troubleshooting and I don't understand where  
>> the?MKDIR(/VAR/WWW/MAIL)?is coming from. Mailboxes are in /var/mail  
>> and
>
> ^^ /var/mail contains the INBOX only
>
>> sending/receiving emails is working as it always did.
>>
>> mail_location is still setup to be?MAIL_LOCATION =  
>> MBOX:~/MAIL:INBOX=/VAR/MAIL/%U
>
> Everything else is in ~/MAIL (why uppercase?)
>
>> Why is it trying a mkdir in /var/www?
>
> Because most likely /var/www is the home directory of www-data and  
> you've configured to use $HOME/MAIL as base directory, which is  
> /var/www/mail
> - -- Steffen Kaiser
I don't know where the uppercase is coming from. In the email I've  
sent its lower case.

How can I fix that without changing permissions of /var/www? Where is  
$HOME/MAIL configured? Why do I get this error now for the first time,  
when there was no change to the system configuration?
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