error messages in mail.log

[Robin Paulson]

my mail server has been misbehaving for a while now, and trawling
through the mail logs, i find this a lot:

----
Feb 22 22:41:02 soma2 dovecot: deliver(www-data):
mkdir(/var/www/Maildir/cur) failed: Permission denied
(euid=33(www-data) egid=33(www-data) missing +w perm: /var/www)
----
i'm not sure why it would be writing to /var/www/, my mail is
delivered to /home/<user>/Maildir

a duck duck go search reveals nothing. any ideas anyone?
--
robin

http://tangleball.org.nz/ - Auckland's Creative Space
http://openstreetmap.org.nz/ - Open Street Map New Zealand
http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/

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[Steve Holdoway]

It looks like your web server is receiving mail ( user www-data ), and
you're using maildir format.

As the home dir for www-data is /var/www, you
need /var/www/Maildir/cur, .../new and .../tmp set up and writeable by
www-data.

Alternatively, you my want to change the home dir for www-data, or
redirect to another account...

hth,

Steve

Post by Robin Paulson
my mail server has been misbehaving for a while now, and trawling
----
mkdir(/var/www/Maildir/cur) failed: Permission denied
(euid=33(www-data) egid=33(www-data) missing +w perm: /var/www)
----
i'm not sure why it would be writing to /var/www/, my mail is
delivered to /home/<user>/Maildir
a duck duck go search reveals nothing. any ideas anyone?

--
Steve Holdoway <***@greengecko.co.nz>
http://www.greengecko.co.nz
MSN: ***@greengecko.co.nz
Skype: sholdowa


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[Robin Paulson]

Post by Steve Holdoway
It looks like your web server is receiving mail ( user www-data ), and
you're using maildir format.

i'm not sure what that means - how does my web server receive email?

Post by Steve Holdoway
As the home dir for www-data is /var/www, you
need /var/www/Maildir/cur, .../new and .../tmp set up and writeable by
www-data.
Alternatively, you my want to change the home dir for www-data, or
redirect to another account...

--
robin

http://tangleball.org.nz/ - Auckland's Creative Space
http://openstreetmap.org.nz/ - Open Street Map New Zealand
http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/

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[Steve Holdoway]

Post by Robin Paulson

Post by Steve Holdoway
It looks like your web server is receiving mail ( user www-data ), and
you're using maildir format.

i'm not sure what that means - how does my web server receive email?

Post by Steve Holdoway
As the home dir for www-data is /var/www, you
need /var/www/Maildir/cur, .../new and .../tmp set up and writeable by
www-data.
Alternatively, you my want to change the home dir for www-data, or
redirect to another account...

Well, it may be internal? Without more info, can't help that much... you
could always create the relevant dirs, and see what arrives??

Steve

[Jim Cheetham]

Post by Robin Paulson
i'm not sure what that means - how does my web server receive email?

Someone sends a message addressed to www-***@yourdomain, and the MTA
tried to deliver it ... the web server itself has nothing to do with
it.

The most likely reason for repeated email to this address is
non-delivery reports from messages sent by www-***@yourdomain. If you
don't think you are supposed to be sending mail, check carefully what
is going on -- you probably have a webform somewhere that is being
spammed (I guess you have PHP enabled, and a contact form somewhere,
and a simple script behind it that was copied from 'somewhere'), and
your server is spewing spam into the net.

Or, more benignly, some web script is trying to send you occasional
status messages, but is misconfigured.

Post by Robin Paulson

Post by Steve Holdoway
Alternatively, you my want to change the home dir for www-data, or
redirect to another account...

Definitely redirect, or configure your server to reject.

-jim

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[Nevyn]

Post by Jim Cheetham
Definitely redirect, or configure your server to reject.
-jim

Isn't this kind of at the end of things to try? Find out what's going
on first? i.e. is it just the machine sending mail to itself or is it
something more notorious?

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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[Jim Cheetham]

Post by Nevyn

Post by Jim Cheetham
Definitely redirect, or configure your server to reject.

Isn't this kind of at the end of things to try? Find out what's going
on first? i.e. is it just the machine sending mail to itself or is it
something more notorious?

No, it is the necessary prior step, which should have happened
*before* the MTA went online.

Accepting "everything" and then failing to deliver it is just not good.

-jim

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[Nevyn]

Post by Robin Paulson
a duck duck go search reveals nothing. any ideas anyone?

That's kind of cool - though it's much easier saying "Googled". Just
like for photo retouching it's much easier saying "gimped".

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/

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