[Dovecot] fchown() failed

[Arthur Dent]

On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 15:05 -0400, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-08-19 at 13:18 +0100, Arthur Dent wrote:
> >     dovecot: Dovecot v1.2.0 starting up (core dumps disabled): 1 Time(s)
> >     dovecot: IMAP(mark): fchown() failed with file /home/mark/Mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.log.newlock: Operation not permitted: 1 Time(s)
> 
> v1.2.3+ would have given a bit better error message here.

Ironically, since I posted my original message last week Fedora issued
an updated Dovecot package, so here is yesterday's message in syslog:

 **Unmatched Entries**
    dovecot: Dovecot v1.2.3 starting up (core dumps disabled): 1 Time(s)
    dovecot: IMAP(helena): fchown(/home/wife/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache.lock, -1, 12(mail)) failed: Operation not permitted (egid=501(helena), group based on /var/mail/helena): 1 Time(s)
    dovecot: IMAP(mark): chown(/home/mark/Mail/.imap/INBOX, -1, 12(mail)) failed: Operation not permitted (egid=500(mark), group based on /var/mail/mark): 1 Time(s)
    dovecot: IMAP(mark): fchown(/home/mark/Mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache.lock, -1, 12(mail)) failed: Operation not permitted (egid=500(mark), group based on /var/mail/mark): 1 Time(s)
    dovecot: IMAP(mark): fchown(/home/mark/Mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.log.newlock, -1, 12(mail)) failed: Operation not permitted (egid=500(mark), group based on /var/mail/mark): 1 Time(s)
    dovecot: IMAP(mark): fchown(/home/mark/Mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.tmp, -1, 12(mail)) failed: Operation not permitted (egid=500(mark), group based on /var/mail/mark): 1 Time(s)
    dovecot: IMAP(mark): mkdir(/home/mark/Mail/.imap/INBOX) failed: Operation not permitted: 1 Time(s)

> Anyway the issue is that nowadays Dovecot tries to preserve mailbox's permissions
> so that shared mailboxes work properly. What permissions do you have in
> the actual INBOX file?

ls -la /var/mail/
total 202024
drwxrwxr-x.  2 root   mail      4096 2009-08-26 10:30 .
drwxr-xr-x. 15 root   root      4096 2009-08-13 12:35 ..
-rw-rw----.  1 clamav mail         0 2009-08-12 12:40 clamav
-rw-rw----.  1 wife   mail 190669010 2009-08-26 10:00 wife
-rw-rw----.  1 mark   mail   8421931 2009-08-26 09:46 mark
-rw-------.  1 root   root    787636 2009-08-26 10:30 root
-rw-rw----.  1 rpc    mail         0 2009-08-11 16:26 rpc
-rw-rw----.  1 son    mail   6750285 2009-08-26 00:39 son

> 
> My guess is that you have 0660 permissions of /var/mail/$USER so Dovecot
> tries to preserve the group. Easiest fix that also makes your system
> more secure is to chmod 0600 it.

Hmmm - OK, seems you're right about that. Will changing it break
anything else? Why does group "mail" exist?

I will try chmod 0600 and see what happens. 

> 
> > As I access my mailbox several times a day (and certainly did yesterday)
> > from several different mail clients I am surprised that the error count
> > is only 1 for most the above entries. Is this being caused by some sort
> > of cron job (logrotate perhaps)?
> 
> It happens only when index files are being created/rotated, which
> happens automatically "every once in a while".

Thanks very much. Your help is greatly appreciated...

Mark

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