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I have just finished setting up dovecot and postfix on my server (centos 5.5/apache) earlier today. So far I've been able to get email working through webmin (can send/receive to and from external domains). However, attempting to telnet xxx.xxx.xx.xxx 110 returns the following errors:

Connected to xxx.xxx.xx.xxx.  
Escape character is '^]'.  
+OK Dovecot ready.  
USER mailtest  
+OK  
PASS *********  
+OK Logged in.  
-ERR [IN-USE] Couldn't open INBOX: Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information. [2011-02-11 22:55:48]  
Connection closed by foreign host.  

Which further logs the following error

dovecot: Feb 11 21:32:48 Info: pop3-login: Login: user=, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:xxx.xxx.xx.xxx, lip=::ffff:xxx.xxx.xx.xxx, TLS  
dovecot: Feb 11 21:32:48 Error: POP3(mailtest): stat(/home/mailtest/MailDir/cur) failed: Permission denied  
dovecot: Feb 11 21:32:48 Error: POP3(mailtest): stat(/home/mailtest/MailDir/cur) failed: Permission denied  
dovecot: Feb 11 21:32:48 Error: POP3(mailtest): Couldn't open INBOX: Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information. [2011-02-11 21:32:48]  
dovecot: Feb 11 21:32:48 Info: POP3(mailtest): Couldn't open INBOX top=0/0, retr=0/0, del=0/0, size=0

Also, when attempting to login to squirrelmail or access the account via thunderbird/live mail etc, it obviously fails with a similar issue.

Any suggestions or outside thinking on this would be a massive help! I've pretty much exhausted every resource, and tried every suggestion for my dovecot.conf file, but so far nothing seems to work :( I feel like it may be a permissions/ownership issue, but i'm lost as to specifics.

Ben Pilbrow
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Jonathan
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2 Answers2

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Looks like the problem is "stat(/home/mailtest/MailDir/cur) failed: Permission denied". Make sure that directory is readable by whatever user is running the Dovecot process.

slillibri
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dovecot: Feb 11 21:32:48 Error: POP3(mailtest): stat(/home/mailtest/MailDir/cur) failed: Permission denied  

indicates that /home/mailtest/MailDir/cur is not readable/writable by the dovecot pop3 server process. What does

ls -lah /home/mailtest/MailDir

show for permissions on the directory?

Also check /var/log/messages/maillog to see what error messaged dovecot is reporting there.

squirrelmail and thunderbird are also probably using connecting to the machine via dovecot.

Note that the dovecot pop3 process runs as the user accessing it, so that probably means the mailtest user is not the owner of /home/mailtest/MailDir or something along those lines.

Phil Hollenback
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