On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 04:52:31PM +0100, William Blunn wrote:
On 18/09/2010 01:15, Paul Scott wrote:
I have just set up a new system on a new hard drive on the same computer. fetchmail is correctly putting mail in /var/mail/<username>.
Whilst I am no expert on fetchmail, as far as I know fetchmail does not deliver mail itself but rather passes it on to an MTA. So I think it may be your MTA that is delivering mail to mbox files in /var/mail.
Thanks for that reminder.
I have copied my entire Maildir directory from the old hard drive. I have made what changes I understood to dovecot.conf.
Dovecot was working on the other drive even though I'm not completely sure how I got it working before.
How about looking at the old Dovecot configuration under /etc on the old drive?
I have done that several times.
Having said that, having mail delivered to mbox files under /var/mail, but other folders under Maildir might not be the best configuration:
to get Dovecot to be able to handle that setup means having two different mailbox formats which means a namespace configuration,
your INBOX is going to an mbox under /var/mail, which is fraught with potential locking problems (unless this has somehow magically been taken care of for you).
You may be better off getting all mail delivered straight to Maildir, thereby making everything Maildir.
That's what I thought was happening since it was happening on the previous setup. OTOH mutt sees the old INBOX but doesn't see the other folders anymore.
This would then make your Dovecot configuration simpler, and also remove the potential locking problems of using mbox.
I don't know how to do that. Everything was under Maildir in the previous system and I don't know why it doesn't seem to be now.
Any ideas for debugging this certainly simple problem for some of you.
Please try to describe a specific symptom or specific symptoms you are experiencing.
Dovecot doesn't seem to be putting mail in the Maildir INBOX. Now I see log messages which may make things much clearer. It may be about passwords which are the same on the new system as the old.
Sep 18 09:55:31 bliss dovecot: imap-login: Disconnected (auth failed, 4 attempts): user=<paul>, method=PLAIN, rip=68.0.135.186, lip=192.168.1.102
Please provide the output of "dovecot -n".
paul@bliss:~$ sudo dovecot -n # 1.2.13: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 i686 Debian squeeze/sid log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S ssl: no disable_plaintext_auth: no login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login mail_privileged_group: mail mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir mbox_write_locks: fcntl dotlock auth default: passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd
It might also be an idea to say what MTA you are using.
AFAIK: exim4
For The Avoidance Of Doubt, I am not 'taking on your case', but merely providing one step of suggestions.
This was very helpful. I still not sure exactly the password problem is but that probably narrows it down for now.
Please reply to the list (i.e. not to me).
Certainly,
Many thanks,
Paul