[Dovecot] stat() failed with mbox /var/mail/%u

[Jungshik Shin]

Jim Tittsler wrote:
> On Jul 8, 2005, at 02:58, Jungshik Shin wrote:
> 
>> I tried various combinations of permissions and ownerships for /var/ mail
>> (1777, 2775) and /var/mail/<userid>, but nothing made any  difference.  I
>> also tweaked mbox locking methods ('dotlock fcntl' or 'fcntl' alone)
>> When I came across this problem with the latest stable (2005-07-06), I
> 
> 
> FC normally makes /var/mail a symbolic link to /var/spool/mail.  With  
> the -stable version I specified /var/spool/mail in my  default_mail_env, 
> and chmod'ed /var/spool/mail to 1777 (although with  the extra_groups 
> setting you could reduce that with the correct group  ownership).

I tried that, too, but it didn't change anything. However !!!

> Are you running with SELinux enabled?  (If so, did you update the  
> policy for Dovecot?)

I guess this is it !!  Thanks a lot !!


In desperation (people had been keeping me asking when the server would 
be back up), I went back to UW-IMAP (I grabbed the source code and 
compiled it), but I'll try dovecot again with SELinux disabled (or 
changing the policy for SELinux). It never occurred to me that there is 
*additional* factors affecting the file access privilige with SELinux 
enabled. (I knew and heard that, but I completely forgot about it while 
wrestling with this issue).

> I can't explain why it worked in your initial tests though.

Probably, somehow, while testing,  SELinux was disabled, but later it 
was enabled and drove me nut :-)

Thanks again !!!!

Jungshik