Hello there

I've searched the web, the respective documentations and co-workers grey matter to no avail (though fortunately said co-worker was able to find what was exactly wrong).

I've got a postfix mailer, if i disable the virtual mail mapping, i can mail it from anywhere, if i enable the virtual mapping, i can only mail it from the local system (because to mail at it directly i include the hostname, which does not match the mysql database, and the original server is still up and being used so we can't test it more indepth). I'm reasonably certain that the receipt of mail is happening fine, because when i use mail, I can send and it turns up in /var/mail/virtual/<user>/new

Ok so knowing that is working is great BUT now i'd like to also access the email remotely.

My mysql database is accessible for my mail user, and the email is transfered so all the data fields are being accessed correctly by postfix. So that implies the problem is in Courier-Imap alone that is having issues.

I have set up a test account on a remote system (or rather the one i am working on) for both imap and pop3 access (courier-imap-pop3d is installed)

this is the output of the /var/log/syslog for pop3
Jan 21 14:45:36 Lob1 pop3d: LOGIN: DEBUG: ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], command=USER
Jan 21 14:45:36 Lob1 pop3d: LOGIN: DEBUG: ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], command=PASS
Jan 21 14:45:36 Lob1 pop3d: LOGIN: DEBUG: ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], username=test5
Jan 21 14:45:36 Lob1 pop3d: LOGIN: DEBUG: ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], password=
Jan 21 14:45:36 Lob1 pop3d: LOGIN, user=test5, ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76]
Jan 21 14:45:36 Lob1 pop3d: pop3d: Permission denied
Jan 21 14:45:36 Lob1 pop3d: LOGOUT, user=test5, ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], top=0, retr=0

The mail client here (Kmail) gives me absolutely nothing - no error no mail (there are two emails sent to the test account)

and this is imap:
Jan 21 14:48:29 Lob1 imapd: Connection, ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76]
Jan 21 14:48:29 Lob1 imapd: LOGIN: DEBUG: ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], command=CAPABILITY
Jan 21 14:48:29 Lob1 imapd: LOGIN: DEBUG: ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], command=LOGIN
Jan 21 14:48:29 Lob1 imapd: LOGIN: DEBUG: ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], username=test5
Jan 21 14:48:29 Lob1 imapd: LOGIN: DEBUG: ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], password=
Jan 21 14:48:29 Lob1 imapd: LOGIN, user=test5, ip=[::ffff:203.16.176.76], protocol=IMAP

Here the mailclient (again Kmail) is giving me a long spiel about how the connection got established etc but something went wrong.

Ok i've looked into this further and still no avail. It appears this is a fairly common problem:

I've now got it down to a sole issue of the server returning a maildir not found error:
-ERR Maildir: No such file or directory

Which is a courier based error (postfix is moving files to the right place, so it isn't postfix OR mysql). The advice so far has been a resounding "the error is in the /etc/courier/auth*rc files" which in my case means authdaemonrc and authmysqlrc but i've compared it against my howto from http://home.eray.biz/sites/postfix/ and they match.

Again any input on what i should look for would be highly appreachiated.