[Dovecot] Automounted home dirs not working

[Roy McMorran]

I'm testing Dovecot as a possible replacement for UW.  In my environment 
the home directories are automounted via NFS from a NetApp.  In general 
this works fine, but Dovecot isn't picking up the automounted 
directories.  Consider the case of Arthur Dent, test user:


May 12 10:30:24 testbed dovecot: [ID 107833 mail.info] imap-login: 
Login: user=<adent>, method=PLAIN, rip=xxx.xxx.xxx.242, 
lip=xxx.xxx.xxx.242, secured
May 12 10:30:24 testbed dovecot: [ID 107833 mail.error] IMAP(adent): 
mkdir_parents(/home/adent/Mail) failed: No such file or directory
May 12 10:30:24 testbed dovecot: [ID 107833 mail.error] IMAP(adent): 
Mail storage creation failed with mail_location: 
mbox:/home/adent/Mail:INBOX=/var/mail/adent
May 12 10:30:24 testbed dovecot: [ID 961074 mail.error] child 21816 
(imap) returned error 89

(if however I make sure that /home/adent is mounted at the server (eg. 
cd /home/adent) prior to starting the mail client this error does not occur)

Why isn't the automount succeeding?

This is Dovecot Version 1.0.13.  I'm running under Solaris 10.

Thanks!
Roy

PS:

[root at testbed][ /var/log ]# dovecot -n
# 1.0.13: /etc/dovecot.conf
base_dir: /var/run/dovecot/
protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s
ssl_cert_file: /etc/ssl/certs/imapd.pem
ssl_key_file: /etc/ssl/private/imapd.pem
disable_plaintext_auth: no
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
verbose_proctitle: yes
mail_privileged_group: mail
mail_location: mbox:~/Mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
mmap_disable: yes
dotlock_use_excl: yes
mail_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/pop3
pop3_uidl_format(default):
pop3_uidl_format(imap):
pop3_uidl_format(pop3): %08Xv%08Xu
auth default:
  mechanisms: plain login
  passdb:
    driver: pam
  passdb:
    driver: ldap
    args: /etc/dovecot-ldap.conf
  userdb:
    driver: passwd
  userdb:
    driver: ldap
    args: /etc/dovecot-ldap.conf


-- 

Roy McMorran
Systems Administrator
MDI Biological Laboratory
mcmorran at mdibl.org