Sorry about the delays on following up on this, I am really struggling to get somewhere, but have made some minor progress, see below.

I am now starting to suspect that it may be a problem that I have a virtual user in dovecot trying to access a maildir owned by the system user. Although the maildir has full permissions (777), could it be that SELinux is blocking the virtual user access to the file through dovecot because it is owned by the system user?

Thomas Harold <thomas-lists@nybeta.com> writes:

On 6/24/2013 9:58 AM, Johnny wrote:

...

Yes, /var/log/audit/ with audit.log. There are some archived logs as well, but no recent messages regarding dovecot perms.

Typically you could use "sealert -a /var/log/audit/audit.log /var/log/audit/audit.log.1" to get a feel for how many SELinux exceptions are happening.

I found out that auditd had the wrong permissions and therefore didn't start. Setting the permissions of /var/log/audit/audit.log to 0600 enabled starting auditd. Unfortunately, audit.log doesn't log any errors with SELinux in Permissive mode (nor for Enforcing).

Also, when you say that the restorecon -R did not fix the issue, did you check the output of "ls -Z" after running it?

I also found out that semanage didn't work initially, as there was a symbolic link in the path. Referencing the location directly, the relabelling worked, so now Maildir and all below is type mail_spool_t.

,---- ls -Z /home/user/data1/Maildir | drwx------. user user system_u:object_r:mail_spool_t:s0 juser | | drwx------. user user system_u:object_r:mail_spool_t:s0 yggdrasil | `----

However, looking at your original message, I'm wondering why the forward slashes are doubled up. For instance: "/home/user/data1/Maildir//"

Good spot! I have defined different virtual users for in a 'users' file, and there was a trailing slash in the maildir location as well as a leading slash in mail folder path. I have now removed the trailing slash so there is no double slashes in the path anymore.

The problem however still remains; with SELinux in Permissive, there are no issues in logging into the dovecot server. When I set it to Enforcing, the telnet session is closed immediately when trying to login with the message

: telnet localhost 143 : a login [user] [password] ,---- | * BYE Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information. | Connection closed by foreign host. `----

From the dovecot log (below) it looks like a write permission error.

,---- cat /var/log/dovecot | Aug 19 23:33:29 imap-login: Info: Login: user=<juser>, method=PLAIN, rip=127.0.0.1, lip=127.0.0.1, mpid=5217, secured, session=<2AKSh1Tk1QB/AAAB> | Aug 19 23:34:11 imap(juser): Info: Connection closed in=0 out=319 | Aug 19 23:34:18 imap-login: Info: Login: user=<juser>, method=PLAIN, rip=127.0.0.1, lip=127.0.0.1, mpid=5224, secured, session=<34J+ilTk1gB/AAAB> | Aug 19 23:34:18 imap(juser): Error: chdir(/home/user/data1/Maildir//) failed: Permission denied (euid=1000(user) egid=1000(user) missing +w perm: /home/user/data1/Maildir// stat(/home/user/data1/Maildir//) failed: Permission denied) | Aug 19 23:34:18 imap(juser): Error: chdir(/home/user/data1/Maildir/) failed: Permission denied | Aug 19 23:34:18 imap(juser): Error: user juser: Initialization failed: Namespace '': stat(/home/user/data1/Maildir//juser) failed: Permission denied (euid=1000(user) egid=1000(user) missing +w perm: /home/user/data1/Maildir//juser stat(/home/user/data1/Maildir//juser) failed: Permission denied) `----

,---- ls -Z /home/user/data1/Maildir | drwx------. user user system_u:object_r:mail_spool_t:s0 juser | | drwx------. user user system_u:object_r:mail_spool_t:s0 yggdrasil | `----

Changing permissions to 777 doesn't change matters at all.

Looking at the permission error in /var/log/dovecot again leads me to think that /maybe/ the issue is that I have a virtual dovecot user 'juser' which tries to read the Maildir owned by 'user'. I.e. these lines: Permission deinied: | Aug 19 23:34:18 imap(juser): Error: user juser: Initialization failed: Namespace '': stat(/home/user/data1/Maildir/juser) failed: Permission denied (euid=1000(user) egid=1000(user) missing +w perm: /home/user/data1/Maildir/juser stat(/home/user/data1/Maildir/juser) failed: Permission denied) File ownership: | drwxrwxrwx. user user system_u:object_r:mail_spool_t:s0 juser |

-- Johnny