LDAP locking problems - home related

[Ganael Laplanche]

Hi list,

# dovecot --version
2.2.13

We use Dovecot LDA and I've discovered lots of messages stating that lock 
files cannot be written:

Mar 16 12:02:03 mailhost dovecot: lda(someuser): Error: 
file_dotlock_open(/home/sg/someuser/.dovecot.lda-dupes) failed: No such file 
or directory

That user's home directory is fetched from LDAP and does not exist locally on 
our 'mailhost' machine, so those error messages do make sense; I would like to 
fix that situation.

In our current Dovecot configuration, only mail_location is set:
 
mail_location = maildir:/var/mail/%u

I would like to ignore the erroneous 'home' attribute fetched from LDAP and 
specify a common mail_home, i.e. set:

mail_home = /var/mail/%u/home

but if I understand correctly, that global mail_home configuration directive 
would still be overridden by the LDAP 'home' attribute fetched from passdb:

[...]
pass_attrs = supannAliasLogin=user,userPassword=password,\
  homeDirectory=userdb_home,uidNumber=userdb_uid,gidNumber=userdb_gid
[...]

Can I just remove homeDirectory from pass_attrs to skip fetching 'home' from 
LDAP and then set the global mail_home ?

Also, if that works:

We would switch from a situation where a home is set (but wrong) to one where 
it becomes valid. Can there be any side-effect in that case (apart from fixing 
locking problems) ?

Finally, will mail_home (leaf) directory be created if it does not exist yet 
(parent directory exists) ?

Best regards,

-- 
Ganael Laplanche <ganael.laplanche at centralesupelec.fr>
Unix Systems Engineer @CentraleSupelec Rennes