Permission Problem

[David Fletcher]

On Sun, 2014-08-10 at 02:47 -0700, Bill vance wrote:
> Howdy folks;
> 
> I've got a really nasty permission problem in my incoming
> email directory.
> 

I've been watching this for a little while.

I don't know how to fix your current problem but would like to offer the
following:-

No way would I call myself a Linux expert, but as I've been running my
own server for maybe 6 or 7 years I think I know more than the average
person in the street.

My server is in its second version. First time around, I seem to recall
using fetchmail with cron to use pop3 to download email from my boxes at
1&1, passing it on to postfix for distribution to mbox files.

Speaking to a friend who definitely IS an expert, there are various
problems and potential problems with mbox, one being your permission
problems. The other big one is file locking - you've got at least two
processes using the same mbox file - delivery and retrieval. For me it
seemed to work but I was never happy, knowing that it could potentially
all go wrong.

On the current, second iteration of my server, it's running Ubuntu
Server 10.04. I'm now using SMTP direct to my server, by editing my MX
record and going via no-ip, with postfix.

The important thing is, I abandoned the mbox format and switched to
Maildir. This, I was told by my expert friend, is way superior for more
than one reason, especially the fact that every message is in its own
separate file so you don't have the locking problem.

Obviously I need to update my server sometime this year because 10.04 is
going to be out of LTS, but I have already tried building a 14.04 server
virtual machine, restored a backup of all the user data, and I can
access all my email on that machine with dovecot/evolution with no great
difficulty.

So the advice I would like to offer is, stop messing around with mbox,
get all of your messages out in whatever way you can into your mail
client, set up your mail machine to use:-

Maildir
IMAP

and I think your troubles will be gone.

Dave




-- 

Lisa Simpson:- "They must have programmed it to eliminate the
competition."
Bart Simpson:- "You mean like Microsoft?"