dovecot-lda can't create /var/mail dotlocks on debian

[Larry Rosenman]

what is the full permissions of /var/mail?


ls -lda /var/mail

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 1:49 PM, John Clements <johnbclements at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I've been using dovecot+postfix happily for many years, and I'm now
> configuring it for a new machine. However, I'm running into an old problem
> again, and thinking that there must be a better solution.
>
> The problem is that dovecot-lda is unable to create dotlock files in the
> /var/mail directory.
>
> Dovecot version: 1:2.2.13-12~deb8u1 (I'm guessing this is upstream version
> 2.2.13)
> OS: Debian Jessie
>
> Currently, my mail directory has these permissions:
>
> clements at desmond:~$ ls -ld /var/mail
> drwxrwsr-x 2 root mail 4096 Nov  2 22:07 /var/mail
> clements at desmond:~$ ls -l /var/mail
> total 8
> -rw------- 1 clements   mail 1382 Nov  2 21:59 clements
> -rw------- 1 granitemon mail  530 Nov  2 22:07 granitemon
>
> I've added
> mail_privileged_group = mail
> to allow creation of the dotlock files.
>
> When I configure postfix to deliver using dovecot-lda, I get logs that look
> like this:
>
> Nov  3 11:12:20 desmond dovecot: lda(granitemon): Error:
> setegid(privileged) failed: Operation not permitted
> Nov  3 11:12:20 desmond dovecot: lda(granitemon): msgid=<
> 20151103181306.A4B5B5FF32 at desmond.XXXDOMAIN.org>: save failed to INBOX:
> BUG: Unknown internal error
>
> In order to isolate the error, I took postfix out of the equation, and
> called dovecot-lda directly:
>
> clements at desmond:/tmp$ cat bogusmail
> From: clements at XXXDOMAIN.org
> To: granitemon at localhost
> Date: November 3 2015
> Subject: graaaah
>
> this is the body
> clements at desmond:/tmp$ /usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -e -d clements <
> bogusmail
> BUG: Unknown internal error
> clements at desmond:/tmp$
>
> In response to this, mail.log now contains this similar error:
>
> Nov  3 11:34:57 desmond dovecot: lda(clements): msgid=unspecified: save
> failed to INBOX: BUG: Unknown internal error
> Nov  3 11:34:57 desmond dovecot: lda(clements): Error: setegid(privileged)
> failed: Operation not permitted
>
>
> I've tried a number of "random internet search" solutions, including
> - changing perms on mail files from 660 to 600
> - enabling 'mail_access_groups=mail' in 10-mail.conf
> - adding individual users to the mail group.
>
> I guess I'm pretty confident that if dovecot is writing "BUG: Unknown
> internal error" in the logs, that this is is actually a bug in dovecot.
>
> OBresearch: I read through the release notes of 2.2.14 -- 2.2.19 to see if
> a relevant-looking bug had been fixed, but nothing jumped out at me.
> OBresearch: searching the dovecot mailing list, I found one *extremely*
> relevant thread called "Re: [Dovecot] started with dovecot sieve
> <http://dovecot.markmail.org/message/kgd34wberxuvmrsa?q=setegid>", but
> there didn't seem to be a solution contained in the thread.
>
> Final note: this doesn't appear to be confined to debian jessie: I took a
> look at my existing installation, and I see that in fact I just went ahead
> and made /var/mail world-writeable, which seems... sub-optimal. I'm sure I
> could do that here, too, but I'd certainly rather not.
>
> Thanks in advance, and let me know if I've left out relevant crucial
> information.
>
> Best,
>
> John Clements
>



-- 
Larry Rosenman                     http://www.lerctr.org/~ler
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