doveadm search -A tries to create mailboxes

[Timo Sirainen]

On 05 Jan 2016, at 15:36, Bill Shirley <Bill at knoxvillechristian.org> wrote:
> 
> [0:root at elmo ~]$ rpm -q dovecot
> dovecot-2.2.18-2.fc22.x86_64
> 
> I got a surprise today when I tried the doveadm search function from:
> http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Plugins/Expire
> 
> [0:root at elmo ~]$ doveadm search -A mailbox Trash savedbefore 30d
> doveadm(clamscan): Error: User initialization failed: Namespace '': mkdir(//Maildir) failed: Permission denied (euid=982(clamscan) egid=289(clamscan) missing +w perm: /, dir owned by 0:0 mode=0555)
> doveadm(clamscan): Error: User init failed
> doveadm(nm-openconnect): Error: User initialization failed: Namespace '': mkdir(//Maildir) failed: Permission denied (euid=986(nm-openconnect) egid=293(nm-openconnect) missing +w perm: /, dir owned by 0:0 mode=0555)
> doveadm(nm-openconnect): Error: User init failed
> doveadm(openvpn): Error: User initialization failed: Namespace '': mkdir(/etc/openvpn/Maildir) failed: Permission denied (euid=987(openvpn) egid=296(openvpn) missing +w perm: /etc/openvpn, dir owned by 0:0 mode=0755)
> doveadm(openvpn): Error: User init failed
> .. plus several more
> 
> I wouldn't think the search function (or any operation) would try to create mailboxes.  These are system user ids
> that don't have or need mailboxes.
> 
> Is this correct?

It's intentional and difficult to change. If you're using system users, you can restrict the list of users that apply to -A. I think just setting first_valid_uid high enough to not match system users' UIDs will solve it.