Hi Andreas,

Check mailing list archives. I asked same questions last week.

My Configuration:

mail_location = maildir:/home/mail/%d/%n mail_extra_groups = mail

namespace public { separator = / prefix = Public/ location = maildir:/home/mail/public }

namespace private { separator = / prefix = inbox = yes }

/home/mail/public/: total 4 drwx------ 7 mail mail 208 Jul 24 10:25 . drwx------ 4 mail root 104 Jul 24 10:18 .. drwx------ 5 mail mail 296 Jul 24 10:52 .Non-Spam drwx------ 5 mail mail 296 Jul 24 10:33 .Spam drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:18 cur drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:18 new -rw------- 1 mail mail 14 Jul 24 10:25 subscriptions drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:18 tmp

/home/mail/public/.Non-Spam: total 28 drwx------ 5 mail mail 296 Jul 24 10:52 . drwx------ 7 mail mail 208 Jul 24 10:25 .. drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:52 cur -rw------- 1 mail mail 0 Jul 24 10:13 dovecot-shared -rw------- 1 mail mail 69 Jul 24 10:25 dovecot-uidlist -rw------- 1 mail mail 144 Jul 24 10:52 dovecot.index -rw------- 1 mail mail 16384 Jul 24 10:52 dovecot.index.cache -rw------- 1 mail mail 460 Jul 24 10:52 dovecot.index.log drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:25 new drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:25 tmp

/home/mail/public/.Spam: total 32 drwx------ 5 mail mail 296 Jul 24 10:33 . drwx------ 7 mail mail 208 Jul 24 10:25 .. drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:29 cur -rw------- 1 mail mail 0 Jul 24 10:14 dovecot-shared -rw------- 1 mail mail 62 Jul 24 10:25 dovecot-uidlist -rw------- 1 mail mail 144 Jul 24 10:29 dovecot.index -rw------- 1 mail mail 17408 Jul 24 10:29 dovecot.index.cache -rw------- 1 mail mail 460 Jul 24 10:33 dovecot.index.log drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:18 new drwx------ 2 mail mail 48 Jul 24 10:25 tmp

Everything works nice.

BTW /home/mail/public/ is not a mailbox and must not contain cur new and tmp folders. As Timo said this bug was fixed in 1.1.

Saturday, July 28, 2007, 5:11:05 AM, you wrote:

Hello list,

I am trying to set up a public mailbox for users to put spam in so that sa-learn can do its job at night. Only I can't seem to fully understand how and which permissions should be set. I've read [1] and am using Dovecot 1.0.1.

First some background information: I do not host or care (at the moment) about virtual users or virtual mail hosting. All users have Unix system accounts and shell access. I'd like to have a Spam folder, say /var/mail/public/.Spam that is a maildir where users can put Spam that got through the server-side filter. Spamassassin's sa-learn runs nightly and learns from the contents of the Spam folder.

After reading [1] I think I should have under /var/mail/public a file called dovecot-shared that belongs to root:mail and has permissions 0660 (with user dovecot being a member of group mail) so that it looks like this:

root@host:/var/mail/public# ls drwxr-sr-x 2 root mail 4096 2007-07-28 03:29 . drwxrwsr-x 3 root mail 4096 2007-07-28 02:19 .. -rw-rw---- 1 root mail 0 2007-07-28 02:46 dovecot-shared root@host:/var/mail/public#

The first question arises: should Dovecot have write access to /var/mail/public itself?

Now I should create the Spam folder called /var/mail/public/.Spam. Should this directory be in maildir format, i.e. should it already contain the subdirectories cur, tmp and new? What of the permissions of this directory? I am pretty sure Dovecot needs write access to it, so it should look like this:

root@host:/var/mail/public# ls drwxr-sr-x 3 root mail 4096 2007-07-28 03:44 . drwxrwsr-x 3 root mail 4096 2007-07-28 02:19 .. -rw-rw---- 1 root mail 0 2007-07-28 02:46 dovecot-shared drwxrwsr-x 2 root mail 4096 2007-07-28 03:44 .Spam root@host:/var/mail/public#

The .Spam directory here is completely empty.

Now in a user's Maildir (/home/user1/Maildir) there are the user's private folders; a symlink to /var/mail/public/.Spam should be added:

root@host:/home/user1/Maildir# ln -s /var/mail/public/.Spam . root@host:/home/user1/Maildir# ls ... drwx------ 5 user1 user1 4096 2007-07-19 16:14 .INBOX.foo drwx------ 5 user1 user1 4096 2007-07-06 23:01 .INBOX.bar ... lrwxrwxrwx 1 user1 user1 22 2007-07-28 03:51 .Spam -> /var/mail/public/.Spam ... root@host:/home/user1/Maildir#

Is that all I have to do? Probably not, because I keep getting errors like the following when connecting (after subscribing of course):

Jul 28 03:52:35 host dovecot: IMAP(user1): mkdir(/home/user1/Maildir/.Spam/cur) failed: Permission denied

Should I have created the cur, tmp and new subdirectories manually and set their permissions like /var/mail/public/.Spam? But that still wouldn't give user1 write access. If I gave the users (or "others": chmod o+w) write permissions then Dovecot's index files would be owned by the first user that connects to the server and uses that folder. Apparently also not a solution. I also don't think I should have to make my users members of the mail group, but I could be wrong here.

So I am not sure what I am missing, or if what I want to do is at all possible (without taking out the sledgehammer and setting all permissions to 0777). I also apologise for this lengthy post with many details and little interesting questions. It's getting late and I fear I've reached a dead end.

I'd really appreciate it if someone knowledgeable could point me in the right direction here.

Thanks in advance!

Andreas

[1] http://wiki.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes

-- Sergey