Ben Morrow writes:

In any case, it's likely that the delivery process looks in the user's home directory even if delivery is to a separate mail spool, unless you've taken steps to prevent this.

I can confirm this. I think the reason is that dovecot changes to the user's home directory so that it has a place to dump core. This causes problem for my setup since I user per-user NFS mounts, so a delivery to an internal mailing list caused hundreds of NFS automounts. I patched this behaviour out, but there is probably a more elegant solution (unset MAIL_STORAGE_SERVICE_FLAG_ENABLE_CORE_DUMPS? How?). Joseph Tam <jtam.home@gmail.com> --- ./src/lib-storage/mail-storage-service.c~ Sat May 19 08:42:12 2012 +++ ./src/lib-storage/mail-storage-service.c Mon Jun 25 22:00:57 2012 @@ -615,21 +615,21 @@ - if ((user->flags & MAIL_STORAGE_SERVICE_FLAG_TEMP_PRIV_DROP) != 0 && - (user->flags & MAIL_STORAGE_SERVICE_FLAG_ENABLE_CORE_DUMPS) == 0) { - /* we don't want to write core files to any users' home - directories since they could contain information about other - users' mails as well. so do no chdiring to home. */ - } else if (*home != '\0' && - (user->flags & MAIL_STORAGE_SERVICE_FLAG_NO_CHDIR) == 0) { - /* If possible chdir to home directory, so that core file - could be written in case we crash. */ - if (chdir(home) < 0) { - if (errno == EACCES) { - i_error("%s", eacces_error_get("chdir", - t_strconcat(home, "/", NULL))); - } if (errno != ENOENT) - i_error("chdir(%s) failed: %m", home); - else if (mail_set->mail_debug) - i_debug("Home dir not found: %s", home); - } - } +// if ((user->flags & MAIL_STORAGE_SERVICE_FLAG_TEMP_PRIV_DROP) != 0 && +// (user->flags & MAIL_STORAGE_SERVICE_FLAG_ENABLE_CORE_DUMPS) == 0) { +// /* we don't want to write core files to any users' home +// directories since they could contain information about other +// users' mails as well. so do no chdiring to home. */ +// } else if (*home != '\0' && +// (user->flags & MAIL_STORAGE_SERVICE_FLAG_NO_CHDIR) == 0) { +// /* If possible chdir to home directory, so that core file +// could be written in case we crash. */ +// if (chdir(home) < 0) { +// if (errno == EACCES) { +// i_error("%s", eacces_error_get("chdir", +// t_strconcat(home, "/", NULL))); +// } if (errno != ENOENT) +// i_error("chdir(%s) failed: %m", home); +// else if (mail_set->mail_debug) +// i_debug("Home dir not found: %s", home); +// } +// }