[Dovecot] Can't disable chroot to 'empty' dir, but need to... how to do it?

[Timo Sirainen]

On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 02:31 -0700, Tim Bessie wrote:
> Hello all...
> 
> I've installed dovecot on my ISP's shell server, and am using SSH tunnelling
> so that I can retrieve my mbox-format mail from procmail-processed mailboxes
> on that server (normally I just ssh there and read them locally with pine,
> but now that I have a phone with an IMAP client, I wanted to be able to read
> it more easily there).

This sounds like you'd be doing imap-over-ssh by executing something
like "ssh host libexec/dovecot/imap".

> The problem I'm having is, although it's working, whenever dovecot starts up,
> or I try to log in, it attempts to chroot to /home/mydir/dovecot/var/run/dovecot/empty
> (where /home/mydir/dovecot is the path to my dovecot installation).

But imap wouldn't do any chrooting

> Mar 19 02:09:43 master: Info: Dovecot v2.0.11 starting up (core dumps disabled)

or start up Dovecot master. So I guess you're not doing imap-over-ssh.
(Or if you are, you don't need to be starting dovecot.)

> Mar 19 02:09:44 anvil: Fatal: chroot(/home/mydir/dovecot/var/run/dovecot/empty) failed: Operation not permitted

service anvil {
  chroot = 
}