[Dovecot] Error: unlink_directory(.../lucene-indexes) with doveadm index

[Timo Sirainen]

On Wed, 2012-12-05 at 05:08 -0600, Fred Kilbourn wrote:
> I am updating search indexes on all my mailboxes via a nightly cronjob that
> runs: doveadm index -A '*'
> 
> The problem we're running into is that random mailboxes will throw the
> following error during the update (sanitized to conceal actual domain name):
> 
> doveadm(user at domain.com): Error:
> unlink_directory(/var/spool/mail/domain.com/user/sdbox/lucene-indexes)
> failed: Permission denied
> 
> We have around 250 domains on the server, with a handful of mailboxes on
> average in each domain.  We get this for a varying number of total mailboxes
> (1 to 6 every night).  It is common for the same mailbox to show up a few
> days in a row and then stop throwing the error.  The script is running as
> root, so there shouldn't be any file level permissions.

Try if this works: doveadm index -A -q '*'

This way the indexing is done by indexer processes with proper
permissions. Although I wonder if it floods the indexer processes too
quickly with the commands if there are a lot of users..