[Dovecot] Some help required - dovecot: IMAP(matthew): unlink(/home/matthew/Maildir/cur/new) failed: Operation not permitted

[Matthias Andree]

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008, matbic at gmail.com wrote:

> Hi all, I have tried very hard to solve this problem but turn to the  
> mailing list as a last resort.
>
> In the log I get, for just one account:
>
> Jul 31 09:06:17 bickertons dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<matthew>,  
> method=PLAIN, rip=78.130.81.201, lip=168.143.5.18, TLS
> Jul 31 09:06:17 bickertons dovecot: IMAP(matthew): Effective uid=1003,  
> gid=1003, home=/home/matthew
> Jul 31 09:06:17 bickertons dovecot: IMAP(matthew): maildir: data=/home/ 
> matthew/Maildir
> Jul 31 09:06:17 bickertons dovecot: IMAP(matthew): maildir: root=/home/ 
> matthew/Maildir, index=/home/matthew/Maildir, control=, inbox=
> Jul 31 09:06:17 bickertons dovecot: IMAP(matthew): unlink(/home/ 
> matthew/Maildir/cur/new) failed: Operation not permitted
> Jul 31 09:06:18 bickertons last message repeated 3 times
>
> All the other accounts work fine.

This pretty much looks like a b0rked Maildir structure, and .../cur/new
being a directory rather than a file - and you cannot unlink() a
directory (rmdir would have to be used, but that's a different story).

The layout should be:

/home/matthew/Maildir/cur
/home/matthew/Maildir/new
/home/matthew/Maildir/tmp

where cur and possibly new should contain some mail files, and folders
being similar to:

/home/matthew/Maildir/.somefolder/{cur,new,tmp,.maildirfolder}

Check how the Maildir looks like and possibly correct it by moving
cur/new or its contents into the right place, and check if the mail
filtering/delivery rules designate the proper places to drop mail off.

-- 
Matthias Andree