[Dovecot] dovecot permission denied problems.

[maw at substantis.com]

Is SELinux enabled? To see if SE linux is enabled on your machine, su root
and type:
/usr/sbin/sestatus

If it is enabled, then try testing after temporarily disabling SELinux by
typing:
setenforce=0

> I am trying to setup dovecot on a FC4 machine. Access to the machine is
> provided through pam. When I login to the machine my home directory is
> mounted over nfs from a central file server. I have dovecot installed
> and running but it can't seem to access my home directory. When I try
> and access my mail I get the following three lines in /var/log/maillog:
>
>> Jul 25 12:46:04 escher imap-login: Login: ######
>> [::ffff:###.###.###.###]
>> Jul 25 12:46:04 escher dovecot: chdir(/home/######) failed with uid
>> ####: Permission denied
>> Jul 25 12:46:04 escher dovecot: child 13182 (imap) returned error 89
>
> The uid that is used is the one associated with my home directory. As
> far as I understand it when you connect to dovecot the imap connection
> setuid's to the uid of the authenticated user so there should be no
> permission problems.
>
> To try and help in the debugging process I also setup a local user
> "testimap" using
>
>> /usr/sbin/useradd -d /tmp/testimap testimap
>
> I then try to use thunderbird to connect to it and I get the following
> in /var/log/maillog
>
>> Jul 25 12:54:54 escher imap-login: Login: testimap
>> [::ffff:###.###.###.###]
>> Jul 25 12:54:54 escher imap(testimap): mbox: Can't create root IMAP
>> folder /tmp/testimap/mail: Permission denied
>> Jul 25 12:54:54 escher imap(testimap): MAIL environment missing and
>> autodetection failed (home /tmp/testimap)
>> Jul 25 12:54:54 escher dovecot: child 13360 (imap) returned error 89
>
> Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong here?
>
> TIA,
> John.
>
> --
> ==================================
> John Mc Donald,
> Dept. of Computer Science,
> National University of Ireland,
> Maynooth,
> Co. Kildare,
> Ireland.
>
> Email : johnmcd at cs.nuim.ie
> Tel: +353-1-7084589
> Fax: +353-1-7083848
> Web: http://www.cs.nuim.ie/~johnmcd
> GnuPG Key: http://www.cs.nuim.ie/~johnmcd/public_key.asc
> ==================================
>
>
>