[Dovecot] Failed to create storage with data

[Tim Middleton]

Switched from UW-IMAP to dovecot a little while ago. Worked through the 
namespace hell with current users. But now I've hit another problem I can't 
seem to figure out.

Some webmail (squirrelmail) users noticed that when they tried to login they 
would jus get this error:

ERROR: 
ERROR : Connection dropped by imap-server. 
Query: CAPABILITY

I discovered in the mail logs the real error was like this:

Apr 1 04:28:38 smaug imap(mcfletch): Invalid mbox file /var/mail/mcfletch: No 
such file or directory 
Apr 1 04:28:38 smaug imap(mcfletch): Failed to create storage with data: 
mbox:/var/mail/mcfletch

And the error seems to be quite accurate. These are new logins seeing this 
error, which do not yet have an mbox file. So the question is, why is dovecot 
not able to deal with this situation?

Searching google i saw the suggestoin to one preson that it was actually the 
~/mail directory unable to be created, but this is not the case in my test 
above, as ~/mail already existed for that account.

Directory permissions seem okay. /usr/mail is drwxrwxrwt (note: /var/mail is a 
symlink to /usr/mail on this system). The dovecot setup is fairly default. 
Platform is FreeBSD 4.9. Authentication is done via system password file. 
There's no problem accessing/modifying existing mailboxes. 

I put in a chron job to touch into existance any non-existing mailboxes for 
everyone in the passwd file periodically, which mostly eliminates the 
problem. But I'd still like to know why the server is having the problem, if 
anyone can make any suggestions.

-- 
Tim Middleton | Cain Gang Ltd | "Are the gods not just?"  "Oh no, child.
x at veX.net     | www.Vex.Net   | What would become of us if they were?" (CSL)