[Dovecot] not creating homedirs when using maildir format

[Alan Bunch]

Here is what works for me:

/etc/pam.d/dovecot  ( note the pam_mkhomedir.so usage.

#%PAM-1.0
auth       required     pam_nologin.so
auth       required     pam_stack.so service=system-auth
account    required     pam_stack.so service=system-auth
session    required     /lib/security/pam_mkhomedir.so skel=/etc/skel/ 
umask=077
session    required     pam_stack.so service=system-auth

Since dovecot does not use PAM sessions by default you need to turn this 
on in dovecot.conf
Below is the section from my dovecot.conf

 passdb pam {
    # [session=yes] [cache_key=<key>] [<service name>]
    #
    # session=yes makes Dovecot open and immediately close PAM session. Some
    # PAM plugins need this to work, such as pam_mkhomedir.
    #
    # cache_key can be used to enable authentication caching for PAM
    # (auth_cache_size also needs to be set). It isn't enabled by default
    # because PAM modules can do all kinds of checks besides checking 
password,
    # such as checking IP address. Dovecot can't know about these checks
    # without some help. cache_key is simply a list of variables (see
    # doc/variables.txt) which must match for the cached data to be used.
    # Here are some examples:
    #   %u - Username must match. Probably sufficient for most uses.
    #   %u%r - Username and remote IP address must match.
    #   %u%s - Username and service (ie. IMAP, POP3) must match.
    #
    # If service name is "*", it means the authenticating service name
    # is used, eg. pop3 or imap.
    #
    # Some examples:
    #   args = session=yes *
    #   args = cache_key=%u dovecot
    args = session=yes dovecot
  }

The args line is the important one.  I also found that is was order of 
the arguemtns to be important.  It didn't work with " args = dovecot 
session=yes"

Hope this helps. 

Alan

Matthias Andree wrote:

>"Ben Halicki" <ben.halicki at macquarietextiles.com.au> writes:
>
>  
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>I'm in the process of setting up dovecot, but for some reason, it's not
>>creating home directories if they don't already exist.
>>
>>I have the following line in dovecot.conf:
>>
>>default_mail_env = maildir:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
>>
>>I have set permissions on /home to allow everyone full access, so
>>creating directories in /home by dovecot non-root processes shouldn't be
>>a problem. If I instruct dovecot to use mbox format, directories are
>>created without a problem.  The problem only seems to exist with maildir.
>>
>>Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>>    
>>
>
>Never done this, ISTR there is a PAM module that is supposed to do this
>(create the directory). It would require you to use PAM, obviously.
>
>  
>