[Dovecot] stat failed: Not a directory

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008, Andrea wrote:

> I have recently installed dovecot on a FreeBSD mailserver running postfix.
> But when I try to login with imap/pop3, I always get an error "stat failed:
> Not a directory".
> I guess it is something wrong with the mail format postfix uses to store the
> message, but I don't seem to find the correct solution.
>

Take a look at http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat

The error you're getting is usually caused by treating an mbox (or similar 
format) file as a Maildir.

So, something in the path:

/usr/local/virtual/internal.domain.com/andrea

is not a directory. (Probably the whole thing -- andrea is probably a 
file.) So, when stat adds '/cur' to that path (which it needs to do if 
andrea is a Maildir), you get the 'not a directory' error.

I don't recall whether Postfix supports Maildir natively (Maildir is 
generally a better format than mbox -- by most accounts). On the server 
where I used it, we just delivered via Procmail (which does support 
Maildir).

Best,
Ben