user can send mail but receives none

[england]

Hi

This is a fresh install of DA on a new server that I'm migrating accounts to from an old server. I encountered this problem on the first user that I've tried migrating.

I've amended zone file for the domain to direct mail traffic to the new server. The output of dig mx indicates that the mail exchange instruction has updated to point to the new server.

I've created users email accounts on the new server with the control panel.

I can log into one of the newly created accounts through SquirrelMail and Roundcube on the new server, but cannot log into Uebimaiu.

Mail sent from webmail to another domain produces a mail in the sent mail folder and a mail is delivered to the destination.

Mail sent from webmail to another account at the same domain is not delivered but does not bounce.

Mail sent to the new account is never delivered but does not bounce.

I have checked through the FAQ and followed

http://help.directadmin.com/?topic=5

which all checks out, except that the virtual pop3 boxes do not exist in /var/spool/virtual, which contains no files at all

I can telnet into the host server on ports 110 and 143, both of which indicate that Dovecot is running

The Direct Admin control panel seems to indicate realistic looking email usage for the mail accounts, but I cannot see the actual mails.

I'm guessing I've missed a step or switch somewhere, and would appreciate help getting mail in and out of accounts on the new server.

Thanks

[scsi]

You probably didnt convert to dovecot properly.

Dovecot does not use /var/spool it uses /home/username/imap

http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=143

[england]

Thanks for the response.

I've checked that dovecot is activated in options.conf


$ grep dovecot /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/options.conf
dovecot=yes


and ps aux tells me that it's running, showing both dovecot and dovecot-auth processes alongside plenty of imap-login and pop3-login processes.

In /home/USERNAME/imap/mail I see

INBOX.Drafts
INBOX.Sent
INBOX.spam
INBOX.Trash

That account's Maildir directory shows nothing in the cur or tmp subdirectories

/home/USERNAME/imap/DOMAIN/MAILACCOUNT/Maildir/new contains about twenty emails owned by USERNAME:mail

Not sure what best to check or do next to cure this.

[england]

I set up Thunderbird with one of the accounts to convince myself that webmail was not a part of the problem. When Thunderbird tried to connect, it told me that it

Failed to connect to mail.DOMAIN

so I tried again the IP address of the host, authenticating as MAILACCOUNT@DOMAIN with the password set in the control panel

This time Thunderbird connected and the status bar informed me that 'There are no new messages on the server'.

[scsi]

cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build todovecot

[england]

done


File already exists: dovecot-1.1.11.tar.gz
MD5 Checksum on dovecot-1.1.11.tar.gz passed.
File already exists: dovecot.boot
File already exists: dovecot.boot.freebsd
File already exists: dovecot.boot.debian
File already exists: dovecot.conf
File already exists: exim.conf.dovecot.patch
MD5 Checksum on exim.conf.dovecot.patch passed.
Shutting down exim:
spamd: no process killed
Starting exim:
Stopping DirectAdmin: [ OK ]
Starting DirectAdmin: [ OK ]

<snip quota info>

Quotas set
Converting to dovecot: stop
done queue
Restarting dovecot.
Shutting down dovecot:
Starting dovecot:
Restarting exim.
Shutting down exim:
spamd: no process killed
Starting exim:
Done.


The only apparent problem reported was

./build: line 5882: /etc/init.d/vm-pop3d: Permission denied

Logging into RoundCube webmail as MAILACCOUNT@DOMAIN, I see no new messages yet

[england]

In /etc/dovecot.conf, I see

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

which doesn't look like the correct path to mail

looking at other dovecot.conf files that are on the host shows similar


$ find | grep dovecot.conf

./usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/configure/dovecot/dovecot.conf
./usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/dovecot.conf
./etc/dovecot.conf

$ grep mail_location /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/dovecot.conf

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

$ grep mail_location /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/configure/dovecot/dovecot.conf

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

$ grep mail_location /etc/dovecot.conf

#mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

[scsi]

What version dovecot do you have.

Check:

dovecot --version

It should be 1.1.11

This is my entire dovecot.conf



## Dovecot 1.1 configuration file

protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s

#ssl_cert_file = /etc/exim.cert
#ssl_key_file = /etc/exim.key
ssl_cert_file = /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/server.crt
ssl_key_file = /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key


disable_plaintext_auth = no

##
## Login processes
##

#login_chroot = yes

login_user = dovecot
login_processes_count = 16

login_greeting = Dovecot DA ready.

##
## Mail processes
##

verbose_proctitle = yes

first_valid_uid = 500
last_valid_uid = 0


mail_access_groups = mail

#mail_debug = no

#mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

# Like mailbox_check_interval, but used for IDLE command.
#mailbox_idle_check_interval = 30

# Copy mail to another folders using hard links. This is much faster than
# actually copying the file. This is problematic only if something modifies
# the mail in one folder but doesn't want it modified in the others. I don't
# know any MUA which would modify mail files directly. IMAP protocol also
# requires that the mails don't change, so it would be problematic in any case.
# If you care about performance, enable it.
#maildir_copy_with_hardlinks = no

# umask to use for mail files and directories
umask = 0007

# Set max. process size in megabytes. Most of the memory goes to mmap()ing
# files, so it shouldn't harm much even if this limit is set pretty high.
#mail_process_size = 256

# Log prefix for mail processes. See doc/variables.txt for list of possible
# variables you can use.
#mail_log_prefix = "%Us(%u): "

##
## IMAP specific settings
##

protocol imap {

# Maximum IMAP command line length in bytes. Some clients generate very long
# command lines with huge mailboxes, so you may need to raise this if you get
# "Too long argument" or "IMAP command line too large" errors often.
#imap_max_line_length = 65536

# Send IMAP capabilities in greeting message. This makes it unnecessary for
# clients to request it with CAPABILITY command, so it saves one round-trip.
# Many clients however don't understand it and ask the CAPABILITY anyway.
#login_greeting_capability = no

# Workarounds for various client bugs:
# delay-newmail:
# Send EXISTS/RECENT new mail notifications only when replying to NOOP
# and CHECK commands. Some clients ignore them otherwise, for example
# OSX Mail. Outlook Express breaks more badly though, without this it
# may show user "Message no longer in server" errors. Note that OE6 still
# breaks even with this workaround if synchronization is set to
# "Headers Only".
# outlook-idle:
# Outlook and Outlook Express never abort IDLE command, so if no mail
# arrives in half a hour, Dovecot closes the connection. This is still
# fine, except Outlook doesn't connect back so you don't see if new mail
# arrives.
# netscape-eoh:
# Netscape 4.x breaks if message headers don't end with the empty "end of
# headers" line. Normally all messages have this, but setting this
# workaround makes sure that Netscape never breaks by adding the line if
# it doesn't exist. This is done only for FETCH BODY[HEADER.FIELDS..]
# commands. Note that RFC says this shouldn't be done.
# tb-extra-mailbox-sep:
# With mbox storage a mailbox can contain either mails or submailboxes,
# but not both. Thunderbird separates these two by forcing server to
# accept '/' suffix in mailbox names in subscriptions list.
#imap_client_workarounds = outlook-idle
}

##
## POP3 specific settings
##

protocol pop3 {

# Don't try to set mails non-recent or seen with POP3 sessions. This is
# mostly intended to reduce disk I/O. With maildir it doesn't move files
# from new/ to cur/, with mbox it doesn't write Status-header.
#pop3_no_flag_updates = no

# Support LAST command which exists in old POP3 specs, but has been removed
# from new ones. Some clients still wish to use this though. Enabling this
# makes RSET command clear all \Seen flags from messages.
#pop3_enable_last = no

# POP3 UIDL format to use. You can use following variables:
#
# %v - Mailbox UIDVALIDITY
# %u - Mail UID
# %m - MD5 sum of the mailbox headers in hex (mbox only)
# %f - filename (maildir only)
#
# If you want UIDL compatibility with other POP3 servers, use:
# UW's ipop3d : %08Xv%08Xu
# Courier version 0 : %f
# Courier version 1 : %u
# Courier version 2 : %v-%u
# Cyrus (<= 2.1.3) : %u
# Cyrus (>= 2.1.4) : %v.%u
#
# Note that Outlook 2003 seems to have problems with %v.%u format which is
# Dovecot's default, so if you're building a new server it would be a good
# idea to change this. %08Xu%08Xv should be pretty fail-safe.

#pop3_uidl_format = %v.%u
pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv

# POP3 logout format string:
# %t - number of TOP commands
# %T - number of bytes sent to client as a result of TOP command
# %r - number of RETR commands
# %R - number of bytes sent to client as a result of RETR command
# %d - number of deleted messages
# %m - number of messages (before deletion)
# %s - mailbox size in bytes (before deletion)
#pop3_logout_format = top=%t/%T, retr=%r/%R, del=%d/%m, size=%s

# Support for dynamically loadable modules.
#mail_use_modules = no
#mail_modules = /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3

# Workarounds for various client bugs:
# outlook-no-nuls:
# Outlook and Outlook Express hang if mails contain NUL characters.
# This setting replaces them with 0x80 character.
# oe-ns-eoh:
# Outlook Express and Netscape Mail breaks if end of headers-line is
# missing. This option simply sends it if it's missing.
#pop3_client_workarounds =
}

##
## Authentication processes
##

# Set max. process size in megabytes.
#auth_process_size = 256

# Authentication cache size in kilobytes.
auth_cache_size = 0
# Time to live in seconds for cached data. After this many seconds a cached
# record is forced out of cache.
#auth_cache_ttl = 3600

# List of allowed characters in username. If the user-given username contains
# a character not listed in here, the login automatically fails. This is just
# an extra check to make sure user can't exploit any potential quote escaping
# vulnerabilities with SQL/LDAP databases. If you want to allow all characters,
# set this value to empty.
auth_username_chars = abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890.-_@&

# More verbose logging. Useful for figuring out why authentication isn't
# working.
auth_verbose = yes

# Even more verbose logging for debugging purposes. Shows for example SQL
# queries.
#auth_debug = no

# Maximum number of dovecot-auth worker processes. They're used to execute
# blocking passdb and userdb queries (eg. MySQL and PAM). They're
# automatically created and destroyed as needed.
#auth_worker_max_count = 30

auth default {
mechanisms = plain

#FreeBSD may require this instead of 'passdb passwd'
#passdb passwd {
#}

passdb passwd {
}

passdb passwd-file {
args = username_format=%n /etc/virtual/%d/passwd
}

userdb passwd {
}

userdb passwd-file {
args = username_format=%n /etc/virtual/%d/passwd
}


# User to use for the process. This user needs access to only user and
# password databases, nothing else. Only shadow and pam authentication
# requires roots, so use something else if possible. Note that passwd
# authentication with BSDs internally accesses shadow files, which also
# requires roots. Note that this user is NOT used to access mails.
# That user is specified by userdb above.
user = root

# Number of authentication processes to create
#count = 1
}

[england]

Thanks scsi, you have the same mail_location line.

I'll go through the rest of the conf line by line

Incidentally, telnet says


telnet localhost 110
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.localdomain.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK Dovecot DA ready.
user MAILACCOUNT@DOMAIN
+OK
pass PASSWORD
+OK Logged in.
stat
+OK 0 0
quit
+OK Logging out.
Connection closed by foreign host.

[england]

diff tells me that the only visible difference between my /etc/dovecot.conf and yours is the mail_location :


$ diff dovecot.from-england.conf dovecot.from-scsi.conf
39c39
< mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
---
> mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
104c104
<
---
>
120c120
<
---
>
164c164
< #pop3_client_workarounds =
---
> #pop3_client_workarounds =
203c203
< #FreeBSD may require this instead of 'passdb shadow'
---
> #FreeBSD may require this instead of 'passdb passwd'
207c207
< passdb shadow {
---
> passdb passwd {
211c211
< args = username_format=%n /etc/virtual/%d/passwd
---
> args = username_format=%n /etc/virtual/%d/passwd
218c218
< args = username_format=%n /etc/virtual/%d/passwd
---
> args = username_format=%n /etc/virtual/%d/passwd


and sure enough on lines 38 and 39 of mine :


#mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u


Looks like that comment should be on the next line down

[scsi]

mbox is the old format it should be maildir.

[england]

Well spotted.

Do I need to amend

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

to

mail_location = maildir:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

in /etc/dovecot.conf, then restart dovecot ?

If so, what's the best syntax to restart dovecot ?

Thanks for all the help, scsi. It's appreciated.

[scsi]

Just put the line:

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir


None of that inbox stuff.

[england]

amend made and followed by

/etc/init.d/dovecot restart

and I'm seeing mail in webmail and thunderbird.

Big thanks.

[scsi]

Cool glad to help out.