[Dovecot] stat failed: Not a directory

[mouss]

Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Feb 2008, Andrea wrote:
>
>> I have recently installed dovecot on a FreeBSD mailserver running 
>> postfix.
>> But when I try to login with imap/pop3, I always get an error "stat 
>> failed:
>> Not a directory".
>> I guess it is something wrong with the mail format postfix uses to 
>> store the
>> message, but I don't seem to find the correct solution.
>>
>
> Take a look at http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat
>
> The error you're getting is usually caused by treating an mbox (or 
> similar format) file as a Maildir.
>
> So, something in the path:
>
> /usr/local/virtual/internal.domain.com/andrea
>
> is not a directory. (Probably the whole thing -- andrea is probably a 
> file.) So, when stat adds '/cur' to that path (which it needs to do if 
> andrea is a Maildir), you get the 'not a directory' error.
>
> I don't recall whether Postfix supports Maildir natively (Maildir is 
> generally a better format than mbox -- by most accounts). On the 
> server where I used it, we just delivered via Procmail (which does 
> support Maildir).

postfix does deliver to maildir, provided the mailbox has a trailing 
slash (same note for maildrop). without a trailing slash, it's mbox.

the log suggests that he delivers to mbox. OP probably needs to append a 
slash to the mailbox lookup result in postfix (virtual_mailbox_maps).