Re: Unable to specify home directory for mail_location

5 Aug 2025

      I was able to solve this by specifying userdb use the passwd-file in addition
to passdb using bsdauth:
userdb {
args = username_format=%u /etc/passwd
default_fields = quota_rule=*:storage=1G
driver = passwd-file
}
This is combined with:
passdb {
driver = bsdauth
}
This may be an ugly solution but it does seem to work and only requires me
maintain a single passwd file.
--
Aaron Lin
jrmu@ircnow.org
IRCNow (https://ircnow.org)
On Mon, Aug 04, 2025 at 07:32:55PM -0700, jrmu@ircnow.org wrote:
...
I am now trying to use bsdauth instead of passwd-file:
passdb {
driver = bsdauth
}
When I attempt to login via IMAP, dovecot reports this error:
Aug  4 19:19:43 jrmu dovecot: imap(77561): Error: Couldn't drop privileges: User is missing UID (see mail_uid setting)
Below is the output of dovecot -n:
dovecot -n
2.3.21.1 (d492236fa0): /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
OS: OpenBSD 7.7 amd64  ffs
Hostname: jrmu.host.nastycode.com
auth_debug = yes
auth_debug_passwords = yes
auth_verbose = yes
auth_verbose_passwords = sha1
first_valid_uid = 1000
listen = 104.167.242.227, 2602:fccf:1:2227::
mail_debug = yes
mail_location = maildir:/home/%u/Maildir
mbox_write_locks = fcntl
mmap_disable = yes
namespace inbox {
inbox = yes
location =
mailbox Drafts {
special_use = \Drafts
}
mailbox Junk {
special_use = \Junk
}
mailbox Sent {
special_use = \Sent
}
mailbox "Sent Messages" {
special_use = \Sent
}
mailbox Trash {
special_use = \Trash
}
prefix =
}
passdb {
driver = bsdauth
}
ssl_cert = </etc/ssl/jrmu.host.nastycode.com.crt
ssl_key = # hidden, use -P to show it
verbose_ssl = yes
dovecot will properly drop privileges work if I hard code mail_uid and
mail_gid:
mail_uid = 1001
mail_gid = 1001
But shouldn't dovecot be allowed to drop to any user that logs in, and not get
hard coded to a single uid?
--
Aaron Lin
jrmu@ircnow.org
IRCNow (https://ircnow.org)
On Mon, Aug 04, 2025 at 07:50:54AM +0300, Aki Tuomi wrote:
...
...
On 04/08/2025 01:30 EEST jrmu--- via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:
Greetings Dovecot team/users,
I am trying to use Dovecot to serve Maildir files. The users' email is
located in ~/Maildir (in each user's home directory). I tried specifying
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
but I get this error:
Aug  4 00:06:34 ch dovecot: imap(username): Error: Relative home directory paths not supported: 0
Are relative home directory paths not supported?
Here is the output of dovecot -n:
dovecot -n
driver = passwd-file
}
verbose_ssl = yes
1375 bytes received in 0.00 seconds (5.18 MB/s)
--
Aaron Lin
jrmu@ircnow.org
IRCNow (https://ircnow.org)

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Either add
mail_home = /path/to/home/%u (or something like this)
or your passwd-file needs to returns home directory.
Aki