Dovecot cannot find mailboxes

[C. Andrews Lavarre]

Edgar, thank you for your help:

I have solved gaining access from a client (Evolution) via IMAP to the
server: I can refresh, add folders, and delete folders. But I am still
confounded, as IMAP does not see any mailboxes. Neither we from the
command line (telnet, openssl, login, select) nor the system can find
the mailbox, despite following FindMailLocation:

	telnet, openssl, login, then
    b select inbox
    * 0 EXISTS 
    * 0 RECENT 

    and postfix fails with

    2016-07-23T21:22:37.312039-04:00 lavarre postfix/error[17088]: A8DA2C1BB2: to=<andy at privustech.com>, orig_to=<andy>, relay

But the mailboxes do exist in /var/mail/vhosts/privustech.com/andy and
we point to them in /etc/dovecot/users.

doveconf -n is attached.

-----

Two issues are:
1. file permissions and ownership
2. virtual versus system users

1. It appears that having the correct ownership and permissions on
various files is critical (of course), but those parameters must also
be included in the interior of the /etc/dovecot/user. So if you change
permissions you also must change that file.

For example, you said:

    i also noticed your certificate chain is broken.
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/testinstallation

I worked through this link, thank you. Changing permissions for the
directories /var/mail/* to 

    root:mail     		    ($UID:$GID =     1000:12)

and then changing /etc/dovecot/users correspondingly to

    user at privustech.com    :{plain}actualpassword:    1000:12    ::/var/mail/vhosts/privustech.com/user

now allows a normal login. and we can create a new folder (e.g., work)
and delete it. However, this is at variance with 
	http://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/SimpleVirtualInstall

which says to set the ownership to vmail:vmail	($UID:$GID = 100:
5000). Doing so breaks dovecot.

2. The various links suggest that having virtual users is preferable to
setting system users. The former do not require directories under /homebut they do require a directory in the mail system, which I have provided under /var/mail/vhosts. It also turns out that for virtual users you must include the domain (andy at privustech.com). Making that change allowed the success reported above. But despite that, we still cannot find the mailboxes on login.


Any thoughts on how to have IMAP find the mailboxes (beyond 
FindMailLocation, which doesn't seem to work for me) would be most
appreciated.

Kind regards, Andy 

-------------- next part --------------
# 2.2.18: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# Pigeonhole version 0.4.8 (0c4ae064f307+)
# OS: Linux 4.1.27-27-default x86_64 openSUSE 42.1 (x86_64) ext4
auth_debug = yes
auth_mechanisms = plain login
auth_verbose = yes
info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot-info.log
listen = *
log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
mail_debug = yes
mail_location = maildir:/var/mail/vhosts/%d/%n
mail_privileged_group = mail
managesieve_notify_capability = mailto
managesieve_sieve_capability = fileinto reject envelope encoded-character vacation subaddress comparator-i;ascii-numeric relational regex imap4flags copy include variables body enotify environment mailbox date index ihave duplicate
namespace inbox {
  inbox = yes
  location = 
  mailbox Drafts {
    special_use = \Drafts
  }
  mailbox Junk {
    special_use = \Junk
  }
  mailbox Sent {
    special_use = \Sent
  }
  mailbox "Sent Messages" {
    special_use = \Sent
  }
  mailbox Trash {
    special_use = \Trash
  }
  prefix = 
}
passdb {
  args = username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/users
  driver = passwd-file
}
plugin {
  sieve = ~/.dovecot.sieve
  sieve_after = /var/mail/vmail/sieve-after
  sieve_before = /var/mail/vmail/sieve-before
  sieve_dir = ~/sieve
}
protocols = imap pop3 sieve
service auth {
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
    group = postfix
    mode = 0666
    user = postfix
  }
}
service imap-login {
  inet_listener imaps {
    port = 993
    ssl = yes
  }
}
service lmtp {
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/lmtp {
    group = postfix
    mode = 0600
    user = postfix
  }
}
service pop3-login {
  inet_listener pop3s {
    port = 995
    ssl = yes
  }
}
ssl = required
ssl_ca = </etc/ssl/certs/StartCom_Certification_Authority.pem
ssl_cert = </etc/apache2/ssl.crt/mail.privustech.com_start.crt
ssl_dh_parameters_length = 2048
ssl_key = </etc/apache2/ssl.key/mail.privustech.com.key
ssl_options = no_compression
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers = yes
userdb {
  args = username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/users
  driver = passwd-file
}
verbose_ssl = yes
protocol lda {
  deliver_log_format = msgid=%m: %$
  mail_plugins = sieve
  postmaster_address = postmaster at privustech.com
  quota_full_tempfail = yes
  rejection_reason = Your message to <%t> was automatically rejected:%n%r
}
protocol imap {
  imap_client_workarounds = delay-newmail tb-extra-mailbox-sep
  mail_max_userip_connections = 10
}