[Dovecot] We couldn't drop root group privileges

[J. Erik Heinz]

Hi,

I just installed dovecot. The installation went well and i configured
dovecot to user ~/Maildir. When I tested imap via telnet the login
work, but right after that the connection is cutted: 
	Trying 192.168.0.14...
	Connected to op.
	Escape character is '^]'.
	* OK dovecot ready.
	. login jerik password
	. OK Logged in.
	Connection closed by foreign host.
And the log says: 
	dovecot: Apr 02 19:37:18 Info: Dovecot starting up
	imap-login: Apr 02 19:38:03 Info: Login: jerik [192.168.0.23]
	imap(jerik): Apr 02 19:38:03 Fatal: We couldn't drop root group
	privileges
	dovecot: Apr 02 19:38:04 Error: child 15194 (imap) returned error 89
So the problem is that dovecot "could't drop root group". I started
dovecot with /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dovecot.sh through the user root. The
privilegs of the file are: 
	ls -l dovecot.sh 
	-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  459  2 Apr 19:03 dovecot.sh
the /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf has the following entries. 
	protocols = imap
	ssl_disable = yes
	disable_plaintext_auth = no
	log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
	info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
	login = imap
	login_user = dovecot
	login = pop3
	verbose_proctitle = yes
	first_valid_gid = 0
	valid_chroot_dirs = /var/mail
	default_mail_env = maildir:~/Maildir
	client_workarounds = oe6-fetch-no-newmail outlook-idle
	outlook-pop3-no-nuls
	maildir_copy_with_hardlinks = yes
	auth = default
	auth_mechanisms = plain
	auth_userdb = passwd
	auth_passdb = passwd
	auth_user = root
	auth_verbose = yes
If I understand the dovecot.conf wright, the is the user root required
for running dovecot "auth_user =  root". That's why I don't understand
the erros message. 

By the way, through the installation there was the user and group
dovecot created, should this user start dovecot at boottime? Or should
he be used for other tasks?

Regards Erik


-- 
J. Erik Heinz
Koblenzer Str. 11
60327 Frankfurt am Main
Handy: 0163 337 37 45
Mail: jheinz at wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de