Dovecot cannot find mailboxes

[Andy Lavarre]

Steffen thank you. I shall attend to this as soon as possible. Today I 
awoke to a system that cannot address the hard drive... :-( More 
Screwtape...

Thank you, Andy

On 07/25/16 02:29, Steffen Kaiser wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sun, 24 Jul 2016, C. Andrews Lavarre wrote:
>
>> I have solved gaining access from a client (Evolution) via IMAP to the
>> server: I can refresh, add folders, and delete folders. But I am still
>> confounded, as IMAP does not see any mailboxes. Neither we from the
>> command line (telnet, openssl, login, select) nor the system can find
>> the mailbox, despite following FindMailLocation:
>>
>>     telnet, openssl, login, then
>>    b select inbox
>>    * 0 EXISTS
>>    * 0 RECENT
>>
>>    and postfix fails with
>>
>>    2016-07-23T21:22:37.312039-04:00 lavarre postfix/error[17088]: 
>> A8DA2C1BB2: to=<andy at privustech.com>, orig_to=<andy>, relay
>>
>> But the mailboxes do exist in /var/mail/vhosts/privustech.com/andy and
>> we point to them in /etc/dovecot/users.
>
> Check:
>  doveadm user -u andy
>
> then enable logging and see if Dovecot uses the desired mail location.
>
>>
>> doveconf -n is attached.
>>
>> -----
>>
>> Two issues are:
>> 1. file permissions and ownership
>> 2. virtual versus system users
>>
>> 1. It appears that having the correct ownership and permissions on
>> various files is critical (of course), but those parameters must also
>> be included in the interior of the /etc/dovecot/user. So if you change
>> permissions you also must change that file.
>>
>> For example, you said:
>>
>>    i also noticed your certificate chain is broken.
>> http://wiki2.dovecot.org/testinstallation
>>
>> I worked through this link, thank you. Changing permissions for the
>> directories /var/mail/* to
>>
>>    root:mail                 ($UID:$GID =     1000:12)
>>
>> and then changing /etc/dovecot/users correspondingly to
>>
>>    user at privustech.com    :{plain}actualpassword:    1000:12 
>> ::/var/mail/vhosts/privustech.com/user
>>
>> now allows a normal login. and we can create a new folder (e.g., work)
>> and delete it. However, this is at variance with
>>     http://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/SimpleVirtualInstall
>>
>> which says to set the ownership to vmail:vmail    ($UID:$GID = 100:
>> 5000). Doing so breaks dovecot.
>>
>> 2. The various links suggest that having virtual users is preferable to
>> setting system users. The former do not require directories under 
>> /homebut they do require a directory in the mail system, which I have 
>> provided under /var/mail/vhosts. It also turns out that for virtual 
>> users you must include the domain (andy at privustech.com). Making that 
>> change allowed the success reported above. But despite that, we still 
>> cannot find the mailboxes on login.
>>
>>
>> Any thoughts on how to have IMAP find the mailboxes (beyond
>> FindMailLocation, which doesn't seem to work for me) would be most
>> appreciated.
>>
>> Kind regards, Andy
>>
>>
>
> - -- Steffen Kaiser
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1
>
> iQEVAwUBV5Wx23z1H7kL/d9rAQI0rAf8CIXCVOJAI7zIAtEBr1RWU4fnm4atCU/I
> NRtqslLp8oXnaoB8S6VCoJqtgrssShzIDlUqa0bEDL0UZTENhRa6afhJ2iD6LFqx
> ShpC+PG31Njj3Eezcz0AcFplMrKnYqUIF2Sxdc5n7UVHaS6fgf3gxS7/c2O2yjQm
> XHxSKxioYt6QqneioGuuTh/twdlD5yf2TLmBQIev/lEFFnxsi4toRQuGJKGKpRCD
> dF5dtO0RQxHlAAjS6EQg3St6eNQ41UVIrM+jencqm4npyEYf0enSoPy9DPkYBRph
> 0iJim1dtdXqEBIIMjfYyEAQ7kygALMoavgCDPTLZXoyQzmlbg76ihg==
> =PFXu
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----