Dovecot cannot find mailboxes

[Steffen Kaiser]

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On Sun, 24 Jul 2016, C. Andrews Lavarre wrote:

> 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.

Check:
  doveadm user -u andy

then enable logging and see if Dovecot uses the desired mail location.

>
> 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
>
>

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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