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Accepted
Arek B.
Asked: 2011-11-18 10:32:40 +0800 CST

Postfix/Dovecot don't use pam_mkhomedir

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I have users in external database. So far - ssh, postfix, dovecot and some others - use entries with no problem.
I have Maildirs inside /home/[user] and if the homedir exists - everything is ok - sending, receiving.
If homedir does not exist Postfix/Dovecot prints error, ssh - after login results in brand new homedir made - it uses pam_mkhomedir.so entry in /etc/pam.d/[in few files].

Postfix/Dovecot - successfully use pam.d with database backend but ignores entries with pam_mkhomedir - I have read a lot of hints in which file and on what position place it.
Maybe it's a matter of nameing file /etc/pam.d/[file] ??

postfix dovecot pam

2 Answers

  1. Just for the benefit of others who stumble upon this by googling the Dovecot issue like I just happened to: Dovecot can be made to use pam_mkhomedir if you set it up that way. The documentation is at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/PasswordDatabase/PAM#PAM_sessions

    On a typical Debian/Ubuntu system, you can put this in /etc/pam.d/dovecot:

    #%PAM-1.0

@include common-auth
@include common-account
@include common-session

    (The mkhomedir module is invoked inside common-session)

    And then edit /etc/dovecot/conf.d/auth-system.conf.ext in the section saying:

    passdb {
  driver = pam
  # [session=yes] ...
  #args = dovecot
}

    to have those args say:

      args = session=yes dovecot
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  2. Best Answer

    Postfix is not responsible for creating home directories. Postfix assumes that the home directories already exist when using the built-in local delivery agent.

    If you instead use Dovecot as the LDA then Dovecot also relies on the fact that the home directory exists.

    With virtual users you can set the variable lda_mailbox_autocreate = yes so that Dovecot automatically creates the necessary directories.

    And as Dovecot (and Postfix) do not "log-in" a user for mail delivery, the pam_mkhomedir never gets triggered. PAM is only used for authentication in this case.

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