Re: How does dovecot determine users from /etc/passwd?

Also, you can use

first_valid_uid = <number>

last_valid_uid = <number>

to limit which users are considered valid.

Aki

On 17.2.2020 12.50, Sami Ketola wrote:

Hi,

how about switching to use autoexpunge?

https://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxSettings

Sami

...

On 17 Feb 2020, at 11.01, Philip Colmer mailto:philip.colmer@linaro.org> wrote:

We're using dovecot on a help desk ticketing system. The system doesn't perform any cleanup of IMAP mailboxes so we have a regular cronjob doing this:

/usr/bin/doveadm flags add -A '\Deleted' SEEN SENTBEFORE 12w && /usr/bin/doveadm expunge -A DELETED MAILBOX '*'

Recently, doveadm has been reporting this:

doveadm(nobody): Error: User initialization failed: Namespace '': mkdir(/nonexistent/mail) failed: Permission denied (euid=65534(nobody) egid=65534(nogroup)) doveadm(nobody): Error: User init failed doveadm(DEFAULT-CW-USER): Info: User no longer exists, skipping

Indeed, using

doveadm user "*"

does include "nobody" in the list but I can't understand why. The mail group in /etc/group does not include "nobody" and there are users in /etc/passwd with similar attributes to "nobody" that do not appear in the list of users from doveadm.

What can I do to tell doveadm to forget about "nobody"?

Thanks.

Philip