Hi all,

I’m upgrading my old F9 mail server to CentOS 7 and all is going well. However, I’ve got a problem with recently created users.

I’ve rsync’d /home and /var/spool/mail after moving /etc/passwd and /etc/group

I used the default locations on the old F9 server, i.e. mail delivered to /var/spool/mail/%u by EXIM and Dovecot using that as the inbox.

Dovecot then used ~/mail/ as it’s folder dir.

On the new server this works fine for any user where ~/mail/ already exists, but for any user where ~/mail/ does not exist Dovecot fails.

I’ve done some googling and have tried a number of settings, the most popular one being

mail_location = mbox:~/:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u

However, I haven’t managed to fix the problem. Anyone know what I need to do next?

Below hopefully is enough for someone to see what I’ve got wrong. They’re done with mail_location set to the default, i.e. commented out in
10-mail.conf

I’ve also put the log file up at http://www.stainburn.com/CentOS.log which should be easier to read.

cpage is an established user, tdegg is a new one. As I say below, I have found a work-around but even that still has errors.

[root@ollie2 home]# for F in cpage tdegg ; do ls -lad /home/$F /home/$F/* /home/$F/.* /home/$F/* /home/$F/mail/* /home/$F/mail/.* /home/$F/mail/.imap/* /var/spool/mail/$F ;
done ls: cannot access /home/cpage/mail/*: No such file or directory drwx—— 5 cpage cpage 125 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage drwx—— 5 cpage cpage 125 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage/. drwxr-xr-x. 208 root root 8192 Aug 24 13:27 /home/cpage/..
-rw-r–r– 1 cpage cpage 18 Feb 29 2008 /home/cpage/.bash_logout
-rw-r–r– 1 cpage cpage 176 Feb 29 2008 /home/cpage/.bash_profile
-rw-r–r– 1 cpage cpage 124 Feb 29 2008 /home/cpage/.bashrc drwxr-xr-x 2 cpage cpage 6 Apr 6 2008 /home/cpage/.gnome2
-rw-r–r– 1 cpage cpage 120 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage/.gtkrc drwx—— 3 cpage cpage 18 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage/mail drwx—— 3 cpage cpage 18 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage/mail drwx—— 3 cpage cpage 18 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage/mail/. drwx—— 5 cpage cpage 125 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage/mail/.. drwx—— 3 cpage cpage 18 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage/mail/.imap drwx—— 2 cpage cpage 4096 Aug 24
16:21 /home/cpage/mail/.imap/INBOX
drwxr-xr-x 4 cpage cpage 37 Nov 20 2008 /home/cpage/.mozilla
-rw-r–r– 1 cpage cpage 658 Mar 31 2009 /home/cpage/.zshrc
-rw-rw—- 1 cpage mail 352512344 Aug 24 13:28 /var/spool/mail/cpage ls: cannot access /home/tdegg/*: No such file or directory ls: cannot access /home/tdegg/*: No such file or directory ls: cannot access /home/tdegg/mail/*: No such file or directory ls: cannot access /home/tdegg/mail/.*: No such file or directory ls: cannot access /home/tdegg/mail/.imap/*: No such file or directory drwx—— 4 tdegg tdegg 88 Aug 24 16:17 /home/tdegg drwx—— 4 tdegg tdegg 88 Aug 24 16:17 /home/tdegg/. drwxr-xr-x. 208 root root 8192 Aug 24 13:27 /home/tdegg/..
-rw-r–r– 1 tdegg tdegg 18 Oct 23 2008 /home/tdegg/.bash_logout
-rw-r–r– 1 tdegg tdegg 176 Oct 23 2008 /home/tdegg/.bash_profile
-rw-r–r– 1 tdegg tdegg 124 Oct 23 2008 /home/tdegg/.bashrc drwxr-xr-x 2 tdegg tdegg 6 Apr 6 2008 /home/tdegg/.gnome2
drwxr-xr-x 4 tdegg tdegg 37 Nov 20 2008 /home/tdegg/.mozilla
-rw-rw—- 1 tdegg mail 209466 Jun 10 11:29 /var/spool/mail/tdegg
[root@ollie2 home]#

[root@ollie2 ~]# telnet 127.0.0.1 110
Trying 127.0.0.1… Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is ‘^]’.
+OK Dovecot ready. user cpage
+OK
pass ********
+OK Logged in. stat
+OK 2812 356812518
quit
+OK Logging out. Connection closed by foreign host.
[root@ollie2 ~]# telnet 127.0.0.1 110
Trying 127.0.0.1… Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is ‘^]’.
+OK Dovecot ready. user tdegg
+OK
pass ********
-ERR [SYS/TEMP] Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information. Connection closed by foreign host.

I have found that if I manually intervene, and issue the following commands, things start to work, although I still get errors. Hopefully I get find out how to fix my Dovecot config so that I don’t have to do this every time I set up a new user.

[root@ollie2 home]# mkdir -p ~tdegg//mail/.imap/INBOX
[root@ollie2 home]# chown -R tdegg:tdegg ~tdegg/mail

[root@ollie2 home]# telnet 127.0.0.1 110
Trying 127.0.0.1… Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is ‘^]’.
+OK Dovecot ready. user tdegg
+OK
pass *******
+OK Logged in. list
+OK 19 messages:
1 1099
2 1026
3 1842
4 2053
5 7481
6 25063
7 1275
8 1484
9 19089
10 125054
11 3468
12 3490
13 3490
14 961
15 3177
16 3487
17 3897
18 3895
19 1001
. quit
+OK Logging out. Connection closed by foreign host.
[root@ollie2 home]#

Aug 24 16:42:31 ollie2 dovecot: pop3-login: Login: user=, method=PLAIN, rip7.0.0.1, lip7.0.0.1, mpid0939, secured, session=
Aug 24 16:42:31 ollie2 dovecot: pop3(tdegg): Error:
fchown(/home/tdegg/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.log.newlock, group
(mail)) failed: Operation not permitted (egid 46(tdegg), group based on /var/mail/tdegg – see http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Errors/ChgrpNoPerm)
Aug 24 16:42:31 ollie2 dovecot: pop3(tdegg): Error:
fchown(/home/tdegg/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache.lock, group(mail))
failed: Operation not permitted (egid 46(tdegg), group based on /var/mail/tdegg – see http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Errors/ChgrpNoPerm)
Aug 24 16:42:37 ollie2 dovecot: pop3(tdegg): Disconnected: Logged out top=0/0, retr=0/0, del=0/19, size!2332