[Dovecot] Userdb and home directories

[Mike Brudenell]

Greetings -

I've just discovered an oddity I didn't know I had...

We have two NetApp filers: one serves people's home directories; the  
other their message store and control files filestores.

At the moment the first of the two filers is not accessible to my  
Dovecot system and I assumed all would be well because, as far as I  
knew, I wasn't using it at all.

However in practice Dovecot DOES appear to be using it: it is trying  
to chdir() to my home directory when I login, finds it can't at the  
moment (because of a problem giving "Permission denied"), and closes  
the connection.

I've read the pages on home directories and the userdb on the Wiki  
and it advises that having a home directory is beneficial.  I'm happy  
to create a subdirectory for this within a user's control files  
directory, but do NOT want it on our normal filestore: we can't have  
mail inaccessible because a user's home directory is inaccessible  
because the other filer is out of action.

We use shadow for the passdb and passwd for the userdb (see dovecot - 
n output below).  I'm trying to work out how to override the home  
directory returned from NIS.  Ultimately I'd like to use this template:

     /mailstore/control/%1Ln/%Ln/home

but for the time being while I'm trying to work out how to do it have  
my own area hard-coded in (as it's only me logging in to the test  
system):

     /mailstore/control/p/pmb1/home

I'm specifying this with the "args" directive in the userdb section  
as follows:

    args = home=/mailstore/control/p/pmb1/home

but it isn't being picked up.  What am I doing wrong, please?
(We want to continue using uids and gids etc from NIS so I don't  
think using the static userdb is the right thing to do?)

Cheers,
Mike B-)

Output of dovecot -n
--------------------
# 1.0.3: /usr/local/dovecot-1.0.3/etc/dovecot.conf
log_path: /logfiles/mail/live/dovecot
info_log_path: /logfiles/mail/live/dovecot-info
disable_plaintext_auth: no
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable: /usr/local/dovecot-1.0.3/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_log_format_elements: user=<%Lu> method=%m rip=%r lip=%l %c
login_process_per_connection: no
login_greeting_capability: yes
login_process_size: 64
login_processes_count: 10
max_mail_processes: 10000
mail_location: maildir:/mailstore/messages/%1Ln/%Ln/Maildir:INDEX=/ 
mailstore/index/%1Ln/%Ln:CONTROL=/mailstore/control/%1Ln/%Ln
maildir_copy_with_hardlinks: yes
mail_plugins: quota imap_quota
mail_log_prefix: [%p]%Us(%Lu):
imap_client_workarounds: delay-newmail outlook-idle
namespace:
   type: private
   separator: /
   inbox: yes
auth default:
   mechanisms: plain login
   cache_size: 1024
   cache_ttl: 600
   username_chars:  
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890
   username_format: %Ln
   passdb:
     driver: shadow
   userdb:
     driver: passwd
     args: home=/mailstore/control/p/pmb1/home
plugin:
   quota: fs


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