Permissions on some folders

[Sovetryne]

Running: CentOS 5.3 (RHEL)
Goal: Get Dovecot working as pop3 and imap4 server
Problem: Dovecot disconnects on server side because of permissions - I guess

If this helps, this is a part of the Dovecot log:
dovecot: Jul 24 22:01:51 Info: pop3-login: Login: user=<user@domain.com>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:127.0.0.1, lip=::ffff:127.0.0.1, secured
dovecot: Jul 24 22:01:51 Error: POP3(user@domain.com): file_dotlock_open() failed with file /var/mail/vhosts/domain.com/user/dovecot.index.log: Permission denied
dovecot: Jul 24 22:01:51 Error: POP3(user@domain.com): file_dotlock_open(/var/mail/vhosts/domain.com/user/dovecot-uidlist) failed: Permission denied
dovecot: Jul 24 22:01:51 Error: POP3(user@domain.com): Couldn't init INBOX: Can't sync mailbox: Messages keep getting expunged
dovecot: Jul 24 22:01:51 Info: POP3(user@domain.com): Mailbox init failed top=0/0, retr=0/0, del=0/0, size=0

Please, bear over with me, I am not a guru. Somebody who can tell me, how I change permission on the underlying directories AND files, including NEW files that will be created in one of the underlying directories of /var/mail/vhosts ? chmod 777 /var/mail/vhosts doesn't work, and how chown works - I have no clue!

Albert

[waterhead]

Have you looked at the chown manual?

man chown

I usually use the -R option, to make everything in the folder follow the folder permissions. I also specify the user and user group like this: user:usergroup.

I usually create a /video folder, and then change the permissions with this command. In Fedora, use su to first gain root privileges.

su
Password:

chown -R paul:paul /video

In your case, it may not be advisable to change the folder permissions. You may need to add your user to a specific usergroup instead. There is a mail usergroup, maybe that is the one.