[Dovecot] Permission errors when creating/reading files in users' mail directories

[Bryan Wright]

Hi folks,

     I'm trying to migrate an old uw-imap server to dovecot,
and running into puzzling (to me) permission problems.  I've
configured mail_location as follows:

mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u

and each user's mail directory has permissions like this:

drwx------  2 uid gid 4096 Jul  5 09:26 /home/uid/mail

But when I try to check a user's mail using an imap
client, I see the following error:

Jul  5 09:59:49 imap dovecot: IMAP(uid): mkdir_parents(/home/uid/mail/.imap/
INBOX) failed: Permission denied

     If I open up the permissions so anyone can write, I find
that the .imap directory is successfully created, and owned
by "uid".  Is dovecot initially creating the directory with
some other ownership, and then changing the ownership to "uid"?

     I can get around this problem by setting INDEX in 
mail_location, and pointing it to a directory with more
open permissions, but then I run into the next problem:

Jul  5 09:25:49 imap dovecot: IMAP(uid): open() failed with mbox file
/var/spool/mail/uid: Permission denied

In this case, the permissions are set as follows:

-rw------- 1 bkw1a mail 1267 Jul  5 08:47 /var/spool/mail/uid

How should the permissions be set on the spool files?

                                           Thanks in advance,
                                           Bryan

--
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Bryan Wright              |"If you take cranberries and stew them like 
Physics Department        | applesauce, they taste much more like prunes
University of Virginia    | than rhubarb does."  --  Groucho 
Charlottesville, VA  22901|                     
(434) 924-7218            |         bryan at virginia.edu
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