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I have a dovecot mail server setup with Virtualmin, and for some reason, out of the blue, yesterday, the mail server stopped working. I found that in the /var/log/maillog file, I have the following errors showing up when I try to connect to my server (ceres):

ceres dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<some_username>, method=PLAIN, rip=176.250.217.87, lip=178.79.158.216, mpid=15552, TLS
ceres dovecot: imap(some_username): Error: opendir(/home/my_user_acc/email/max/Maildir/tmp) failed: Permission denied
ceres dovecot: imap(some_username): Error: open(/home/my_user_acc/email/max/Maildir/dovecot.index.log) failed: Permission denied (euid=504(some_username) egid=503(my_user_acc) missing +r perm: /home/my_user_acc/email/max/Maildir/dovecot.index.log, euid is not dir owner)
ceres dovecot: imap(some_username): Error: file_dotlock_create(/home/my_user_acc/email/max/Maildir/dovecot-uidlist) failed: Permission denied (euid=504(some_username) egid=503(my_user_acc) missing +w perm: /home/my_user_acc/email/max/Maildir, euid is not dir owner)
ceres dovecot: imap(some_username): Error: open(/home/my_user_acc/email/max/Maildir/dovecot-uidlist) failed: Permission denied
ceres dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<some_username>, method=PLAIN, rip=176.250.217.87, lip=178.79.158.216, mpid=15554, TLS
ceres dovecot: imap(some_username): Connection closed bytes=16/392

I have tried setting the user group of the Maildir to some_username (not my actual username!), and that made no difference, and also, I chmod +rwx Maildir to try and fix the permission errors, but that did not work either. Please could you tell me how I can fix the error?

Here is my dovecot config file: https://gist.github.com/MaxKramer/4734734

HopelessN00b
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max_
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  • something similar to this happened to me - all of a sudden, dovecot started running as the user who was checking their mail, rather than the overall owner of the virtual server as it had before. I suspect it must have been down to an update I installed two days ago when it started failing. The fix for me was to chown the Maildirs to the user whose mailbox it was, while keeping them in the virtual server owner's group. – jammypeach Mar 19 '14 at 10:16

1 Answers1

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You're probably missing +x permissions on some part of the path (+x on directories means permission to enter). There's a good reason real mailsystems don't store mail in /home :)

Dennis Kaarsemaker
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