On F7, I get to where I have Postfix and Dovecot installed and configured, postfix check runs fine, but when I try to start Dovecot I'm getting a permission error. Here is the log entry:

Dec 29 21:54:06 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.7 starting up Dec 29 21:54:06 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: Generating Diffie-Hellman parameters for the first time. This may take a while.. Dec 29 21:54:06 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: auth(default): bind(/var/run/dovecot/auth-master) failed: Permission denied Dec 29 21:54:06 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: auth(default): net_listen_unix(/var/run/dovecot/auth-master) failed: Permission denied

Here are the permissions on the filesystem:

# ls -ld /var/run/dovecot drwxr-xr-x 3 root dovecot 4096 2007-12-29 22:07 /var/run/dovecot

And in the conf file there is this in the lda protocol:

socket listen { master { path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master mode = 0600 user = vmail }

client {
    path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth
    mode = 0660
    user = postfix
    group = postfix
}

}

What should I change to straighten out these permissions?

I forgot to mention that when I try to start Dovecot that I get this message:

dovecot dead but subsys locked

I'm thinking it is just a side effect of the permissions issue.

Anyway I tried setting perms to 777 on /var/run/dovecot but this didn't help. So still needing some hints.

A clue. I can start Dovecot as 'root': # dovecot # ps -ef

root 14164 1 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 dovecot root 14165 14164 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 dovecot-auth root 14166 14164 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 dovecot-auth -w dovecot 14168 14164 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 pop3-login dovecot 14169 14164 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 pop3-login dovecot 14170 14164 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 pop3-login dovecot 14171 14164 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 imap-login dovecot 14172 14164 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 imap-login dovecot 14173 14164 0 00:07 ? 00:00:00 imap-login

maillog: Dec 30 00:07:40 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.7 starting up Dec 30 00:07:41 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: auth-worker(default): mysql: Connected to 127.0.0.1 (mailserver)

But if I try to start it using init.d: # service dovecot start dovecot dead but subsys locked

maillog: Dec 30 00:12:49 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: Auth process died too early - shutting down Dec 30 00:12:49 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: auth(default): bind(/var/run/dovecot/auth-master) failed: Permission denied Dec 30 00:12:49 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: auth(default): net_listen_unix(/var/run/dovecot/auth-master) failed: Permission denied Dec 30 00:12:49 grp-01-50-90 dovecot: child 14301 (auth) returned error 89

????

Gerry