[Dovecot] Permission denied

[Alex Cherniak]

After several trouble free months and without any obvious reason our server
just stopped working. I cannot even re-start it:



[root at dsmail /]# service dovecot start

Starting Dovecot Imap: Can't open log file /var/log/dovecot.log: Permission
denied



If I create those manually (touch /var/log/dovecot.log,
.../dovecot_info.log, .. dovecot_debug.log) service starts, but reports an
error in dovecot.log: "Dec 16 14:55:30 master: Error:
symlink(/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf, /var/run/dovecot/dovecot.conf) failed:
Permission denied" and users still cannot login.



Where do I start troubleshooting?



Bellow is my dovecot -n:



# 2.0.4: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

# OS: Linux 2.6.18-128.el5 x86_64 CentOS release 5.5 (Final)
auth_master_user_separator = * debug_log_path = /var/log/dovecot_debug.log
info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot_info.log log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
mail_location = maildir:~/%Ln passdb {

  driver = pam

}

passdb {

  args = /etc/dovecot/master-users

  driver = passwd-file

  master = yes

}

plugin {

  acl = vfile:/etc/dovecot/acls:cache_secs=300

  quota = maildir:User quota

  quota_rule = *:storage=1G

}

protocols = imap

ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem

ssl_key = </etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem

userdb {

  args = uid=vmail gid=vmail home=/data/vmail allow_all_users=yes

  driver = static

}

protocol imap {

  mail_plugins = acl quota imap_quota

}