Since getting the basics of postfix+dovecot up and running on Tumbleweed 20180326 (recently updated to the 20180401), I've noticed that the mail logs are filled with sequences of errors like:
Code:
Apr 4 12:10:12 mailsvr dovecot[1881]: master: Fatal: execv(/usr/lib/dovecot/stats) failed: Permission denied
Apr 4 12:10:12 mailsvr dovecot[1881]: stats: Fatal: master: service(stats): child 29347 returned error 84 (exec() failed)
Apr 4 12:10:12 mailsvr dovecot[1821]: master: Error: service(stats): command startup failed, throttling for 60 secs
This sequence seems to appear in the log file about every minute.
There are a lot of discussions on the internet about dovecot login problems that seem to be related to permissions but I haven't seen anything specifically that might be a fix for this. One thread thought it might be due to apparmor or SElinux and that particular problem was, actually, fixed by bouncing apparmor. (Tried that... no joy.)
The directory of dovecot sockets looks like this:
Code:
mailsvr:/var/run/dovecot # ll
total 8
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 anvil
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 anvil-auth-penalty
srw------- 1 dovecot root 0 Apr 3 18:30 auth-client
srw------- 1 dovecot root 0 Apr 3 18:30 auth-login
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 auth-master
-rw------- 1 root root 32 Apr 3 18:35 auth-token-secret.dat
srw-rw-rw- 1 dovecot root 0 Apr 3 18:30 auth-userdb
srw------- 1 dovecot root 0 Apr 3 18:30 auth-worker
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 config
srw-rw---- 1 root dovecot 0 Apr 3 18:30 dict
srw-rw---- 1 root dovecot 0 Apr 3 18:30 dict-async
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 director-admin
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 director-userdb
srw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 dns-client
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 doveadm-server
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Apr 3 18:30 dovecot.conf -> /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 40 Apr 3 18:30 empty
srw-rw---- 1 root dovecot 0 Apr 3 18:30 imap-hibernate
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 imap-master
srw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 imap-urlauth
srw------- 1 dovecot root 0 Apr 3 18:30 imap-urlauth-worker
srw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 indexer
srw------- 1 dovecot root 0 Apr 3 18:30 indexer-worker
srw------- 1 dovecot root 0 Apr 3 18:30 ipc
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 log-errors
drwxr-x--- 2 root dovecot 100 Apr 3 18:30 login
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 master
-rw------- 1 root root 5 Apr 3 18:30 master.pid
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 old-stats
prw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 old-stats-mail
prw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 old-stats-user
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 replication-notify
prw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 replication-notify-fifo
srw------- 1 dovecot root 0 Apr 3 18:30 replicator
srw------- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 18:30 stats-reader
srw-rw---- 1 root dovecot 0 Apr 3 18:30 stats-writer
drwxr-x--- 2 root dovecot 80 Apr 3 18:30 token-login
Frankly, I think the ownership of all the sockets look goofy but they might seem that way to me after seeing all the problems people have been having with dovecot permissions. Some people found that they were able to fix the problem by changing the permissions in the /var/run/dovecot directory but that such a fix is not surviving a reboot.
I suspect these errors are the cause of the poor performance I'm having reading mail with every mail client I have installed---Evolution works but slowly, T-bird and Kmail are complete losses. I'm thinking that those "throttling for 60 secs" messages are the cause of the slowness---messages that seem to display quickly were probably selected just before that 60 sec interval expired, others seem to take as long as a minute (I haven't put a stopwatch on the process).
Any ideas? Pointer to an excellent tutorial on Dovecot's innards and permissions needs?
--
Rick