[Dovecot] Dovecot and file permissions

[Timo Sirainen]

On Thu, 2003-06-26 at 17:24, Spectron International, Inc. wrote:
> I have some questions about some parameters in dovecot.conf, I have them
> configured as this:
> 
> # User to use for the login process. The user must belong to a group where
> # only it has access, it's used to control access for authentication process
> # named sockets
> login_user=postfix

Don't, keep this as "dovecot" or something similiar. It really doesn't
need any privileges. It just needs some dummy user under which it runs.

> # User to use for the process. Only shadow and pam authentication requires
> # roots, so use something else if possible
> auth_user=postfix

auth_user only needs access to your user/password database. Probably
something else than postfix.

> It seems to me that all files created and used by Dovecot as long as they
> were created by the postfix user, they would be accesible. Right? My maildir
> shows as this:
> 
> drw-------    6 postfix  postdrop       65 Jun 26 09:40 Maildir
> 
> so I guess postfix has full access to the maildir. Wouldn't setting
> login_user and auth_user to postfix  let Dovecot access the Maildir?

auth_user and login_user have nothing to do with actually accessing the
mail. You should preferrably have a separate UID for each user in the
system. The UIDs that are used to access mail are specified in the
authentication database. What are you using (auth_passdb and auth_userdb
settings)?