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

[Matthias Andree]

Hi

I hope you're not offended by posting a quote to the list...
you sent the mail just to me.

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

> Here here is an excerpt:
>
> ls -l home/matthew/Maildir/cur
>
...
> drwx------  2 matthew  matthew      512 Jul 30 17:48 cur:2,ST
> drwx------  2 matthew  matthew      512 Jul 31 06:55 new
> drwx------  2 matthew  matthew      512 Jul 30 18:21 tmp:2,ST
>
> Is this to be expected or is this my problem?

These (in .../Maildir/cur) are your problem - someone created a Maildir
underneath Maildir/cur, and dovecot or some other software considered
the three directories messages, and goofed up.

Check your delivery recipes so that none deliver to .../Maildir/, if
you find any, adjust them deliver to .../Maildir/ instead.

I'd suggest to:

cd /home/matthew/Maildir/cur
# move potential messages out to the proper new/... directory
# if mv complains about nonexistent .../*, all the better!
mv 'cur:2,ST/'* 'new/'* 'tmp:2,ST/'* ../new/
# get rid of the bogus directories
rmdir '???:2,ST/' new
cd -

and see if that fixes the problem. If rmdir fails because there are
hidden files, see what they are and where to move them, if the
{cur,tmp}:2,ST or new are empty, fine, someone accidentally ran
maildirmake with bogus arguments.

HTH
Matthias