dovecot - Jul 2007 - Permission errors when creating/reading files in users' mail directories

Hi folks,

     I'm trying to migrate an old uw-imap server to dovecot,
and running into puzzling (to me) permission problems.  I've
configured mail_location as follows:

mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u

and each user's mail directory has permissions like this:

drwx------  2 uid gid 4096 Jul  5 09:26 /home/uid/mail

But when I try to check a user's mail using an imap
client, I see the following error:

Jul  5 09:59:49 imap dovecot: IMAP(uid): mkdir_parents(/home/uid/mail/.imap/
INBOX) failed: Permission denied

     If I open up the permissions so anyone can write, I find
that the .imap directory is successfully created, and owned
by "uid".  Is dovecot initially creating the directory with
some other ownership, and then changing the ownership to "uid"?

     I can get around this problem by setting INDEX in 
mail_location, and pointing it to a directory with more
open permissions, but then I run into the next problem:

Jul  5 09:25:49 imap dovecot: IMAP(uid): open() failed with mbox file
/var/spool/mail/uid: Permission denied

In this case, the permissions are set as follows:

-rw------- 1 bkw1a mail 1267 Jul  5 08:47 /var/spool/mail/uid

How should the permissions be set on the spool files?

                                           Thanks in advance,
                                           Bryan

--
=======================================================================Bryan
Wright              |"If you take cranberries and stew them like
Physics Department        | applesauce, they taste much more like prunes
University of Virginia    | than rhubarb does."  --  Groucho 
Charlottesville, VA  22901|                     
(434) 924-7218            |         bryan at virginia.edu
========================================================================

On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 14:13 +0000, Bryan Wright wrote:
> and each user's mail directory has permissions like this:
> 
> drwx------  2 uid gid 4096 Jul  5 09:26 /home/uid/mail
> 
> But when I try to check a user's mail using an imap
> client, I see the following error:
> 
> Jul  5 09:59:49 imap dovecot: IMAP(uid):
mkdir_parents(/home/uid/mail/.imap/
> INBOX) failed: Permission denied
..
> Jul  5 09:25:49 imap dovecot: IMAP(uid): open() failed with mbox file
> /var/spool/mail/uid: Permission denied
Sounds like your userdb is returning wrong uid. Set mail_debug=yes to
see what Dovecot is really using.

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tss at iki.fi said:
>> Jul  5 09:25:49 imap dovecot: IMAP(uid): open() failed with mbox file
>> /var/spool/mail/uid: Permission denied
> Sounds like your userdb is returning wrong uid. Set mail_debug=yes to see
what
> Dovecot is really using. 
Excellent!  After looking at the uids, I found that my test user had both
an entry in our ldap database and the local /etc/passwd file.  Removing
the spurious /etc/passwd entry (and fixing the local file ownerships)
gets rid of the permission problems.

					Thanks for your help.
					Bryan

-- 
=======================================================================Bryan
Wright              |"If you take cranberries and stew them like
Physics Department        | applesauce, they taste much more like prunes
University of Virginia    | than rhubarb does."  --  Groucho 
Charlottesville, VA  22901|			
(434) 924-7218            |         bryan at virginia.edu
========================================================================