[Dovecot] delivering mail to public mbox with permission 660?

Wed Oct 20 00:30:11 EEST 2010

I am migrating a couple old RH servers running sendmail and UW-IMAP to a 
new Ubuntu 10.04 servers running Postfix and Dovecot.

I have everything working reasonably well except that the permissions of 
newly created mbox mail folders is always 600.

I have reviewed the archives, google, and double checked everything is 
as suggested in the Dovecot Wiki / SharedMailboxes / Permissions.

I am running Ubuntu 10.04 packages postfix 2.7.0-1, dovecot-common, 
dovecot-imapd, dovecot-pop3d, and dovecot-postfix (all version 
1.2.9-1ubuntu6.1).

I plan to install amavisd-new, et.al. for spam filtering and anti-virus 
but have held off until I get Postfix and Dovecot working 100%.

I have configured Postfix and Dovecot to use mbox mailboxes.  I chose 
mbox becaus I have a LOT of shared mbox folders to migrate and decided 
it best to first migrate to Postfix/Dovecot mbox and later worry about 
migrating to maildir (as suggested on the Dovecot wiki mailbox format page).

I have configured private (also as default) and public namespaces with 
the public mailboxes stored in /var/mail/public. /var/mail/public has 
rwxrws--- and is group tarts (the shared "company" group for this server).

Initially I had procmail configured via the mailbox_command.  Initial 
test mail sent to user tarts triggered creation of /var/mail/tarts with 
660 permissions as expected.

I then changed the configuration to use deliver via the mailbox_command. 
  I did this because procmail appears to be unmaintained and to benefit 
from deliver's support for indexing at time of delivery and seive.

I then added user testuser with primary group testuser and supplemental 
group tarts.  I made sure testuser's home directory and mail sub dir had 
rwxrws--- permissions.

I sent test mail to user testuser and had both user tarts and user 
testuser create some subfolders in public (via Thunderbird accounts)

THE PROBLEM is that mbox folders that hold messages are created with 
permssion 600.

My understanding, from the Dovecot wiki and other docs/postings is that 
the folders should be 660 given the /var/mail permssions of rwxrwsrwt 
and ~/mail permssions of rwxrws---

MY QUESTION is how do I correct the configuration and/or directory 
permissions so that mbox folders and .imap indices (especially public/ 
ones) are created with 660 permissions thus allowing users who belong to 
a common group (eg tarts) to access the public mailboxes?

It appears all Dovecot configuration options to establish directory/box 
perms or mask, such as umask, have been deprectated and no longer work.

The primary option appears to be using the permissions yet that is not 
working for me here.

-----------------------------------
/home/:
drwxrws---  4 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:59 tarts/

/home/tarts:
drwxrws--- 4 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:50 mail/

-----------------------------------
/d/home/:
drwxrws---  4 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:59 testuser/

/d/home/testuser:
drwxrws---  4 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:59 mail/

/d/home/testuser/mail:
total 20
drwxrws--- 4 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:59 ./
drwxrws--- 3 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:44 ../
drwxrws--- 3 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:45 .imap/
-rw-rw---- 1 testuser testuser   36 2010-10-19 13:59 .subscriptions
-rw------- 1 testuser testuser    0 2010-10-19 13:50 Trash
drwxrws--- 2 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:54 test1/
-rw------- 1 testuser testuser    0 2010-10-19 13:54 test2

/d/home/testuser/mail/.imap:
total 12
drwxrws--- 3 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:45 ./
drwxrws--- 4 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:59 ../
drwx--S--- 2 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:50 INBOX/

/d/home/testuser/mail/.imap/INBOX:
total 24
drwx--S--- 2 testuser testuser  4096 2010-10-19 13:50 ./
drwxrws--- 3 testuser testuser  4096 2010-10-19 13:45 ../
-rw------- 1 testuser testuser 16384 2010-10-19 14:00 dovecot.index.cache
-rw------- 1 testuser testuser   864 2010-10-19 14:00 dovecot.index.log

/d/home/testuser/mail/test1:
total 8
drwxrws--- 2 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:54 ./
drwxrws--- 4 testuser testuser 4096 2010-10-19 13:59 ../
-rw------- 1 testuser testuser    0 2010-10-19 13:54 sub1

-----------------------------------
/var:
drwsrwsrwt  3 root mail   4096 2010-10-18 10:23 mail/

/var/mail:
total 896
drwsrwsrwt  3 root     mail    4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ./
drwxr-xr-x 16 root     root    4096 2010-03-05 13:57 ../
-rw-rw----  1 nobody   mail    1386 2010-10-12 16:54 nobody
drwsrws---  5 root     tarts   4096 2010-10-19 13:51 public/
-rw-rw----  1 tarts    mail  894107 2010-10-19 08:59 tarts
-rw-------  1 testuser mail     632 2010-10-19 13:51 testuser

/var/mail/public:
total 24
drwsrws--- 5 root     tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ./
drwsrwsrwt 3 root     mail  4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ../
drwxrws--- 3 tarts    tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:51 .imap/
drwxrws--- 3 tarts    tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:02 test1/
drwxrws--- 2 tarts    tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:01 test2/
-rw------- 1 testuser tarts  633 2010-10-19 13:51 test3

/var/mail/public/.imap:
total 12
drwxrws--- 3 tarts    tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ./
drwsrws--- 5 root     tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ../
drwx--S--- 2 testuser tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:51 test3/

/var/mail/public/.imap/test3:
total 28
drwx--S--- 2 testuser tarts  4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ./
drwxrws--- 3 tarts    tarts  4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ../
-rw------- 1 testuser tarts 16384 2010-10-19 13:51 dovecot.index.cache
-rw------- 1 testuser tarts   628 2010-10-19 13:51 dovecot.index.log

/var/mail/public/test1:
total 16
drwxrws--- 3 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:02 ./
drwsrws--- 5 root  tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ../
drwxrws--- 3 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:02 .imap/
-rw------- 1 tarts tarts  614 2010-10-16 15:02 sub1
-rw------- 1 tarts tarts    0 2010-10-16 15:01 sub2

/var/mail/public/test1/.imap:
total 12
drwxrws--- 3 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:02 ./
drwxrws--- 3 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:02 ../
drwx--S--- 2 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:02 sub1/

/var/mail/public/test1/.imap/sub1:
total 12
drwx--S--- 2 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:02 ./
drwxrws--- 3 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:02 ../
-rw------- 1 tarts tarts  408 2010-10-16 15:02 dovecot.index.log

/var/mail/public/test2:
total 8
drwxrws--- 2 tarts tarts 4096 2010-10-16 15:01 ./
drwsrws--- 5 root  tarts 4096 2010-10-19 13:51 ../

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
R.Parr, RHCE, Temporal Arts, Portland, U.S.A.