[Dovecot] Log files

[Timo Sirainen]

Like I said, the log files are created by Dovecot master process at
startup. The log service's user permissions don't matter because the
files are created before it runs. Changing this behavior wouldn't be
easy and I don't think it's worth the trouble.

There's anyway an easy workaround, start dovecot with a script:

touch /home/user/dovecot/logs/dovecot.log
touch /home/user/dovecot/logs/dovecot_info.log
touch /home/user/dovecot/logs/debug.log
chown user /home/user/dovecot/logs/*
exec dovecot

On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 12:46 -0400, Chris Lasater wrote:
> Thanks for responding Timo,
> 
>     So according to the page you sent,
> User setting= Owner of the file. Defaults to 0 (root)
> 
> Would this be considered a bug in Dovecot, since it does not set the file
> permissions to the set user for my configuration?
> 
> service log {
>   user = user
>   unix_listener log-errors {
>     group = user2
>     mode = 0620
>     user = user
>   }
> }
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 12:08 PM, Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2012-05-10 at 14:43 -0400, Chris Lasater wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >     I just started using Dovecot and was trying to create separate logs
> > > instead of using syslog.  Is there a way to get the file permission to be
> > > something other then root?
> >
> > The log files are created by the master dovecot process at startup,
> > which typically runs as root, so it also creates the logs as root:root
> > 0600. Once the logs are created, their permissions are no longer
> > touched. So I usually simply change the permissions once with
> > chown/chmod.
> >
> > >   I have tried the below configuration and it
> > > does not seem to change anything. The log process does change to a new
> > > user, but it still creates and writes as root.  Whenever I test a new
> > > setting I delete all the current logs so they will have to be recreated
> > to
> > > make sure it does not just keep the previous permissions.
> >
> > Right, so that doesn't work..
> >
> > >    I also dont see much documentation on the service log.  according to
> > > dovecot -a there are a good number of options, but I dont see any
> > > information about them.
> >
> > Those aren't specific to log service. There is common documentation for
> > all services in http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Services
> >
> >