Bug#383469: exim4: exim fails to deliver mails to users whose $HOME's it cannot access

[Juha Jäykkä]

Package: exim4
Version: 4.63-2
Severity: important


Just came across this: I have set up exim to deliver the mails to a maildir in
/var/mail/${local_part}/Mail. Everything works fine, *except* for users whose
$HOME (as returned by getpwnam()) is inaccessible to exim. It is easy to reproduce:
just create a user, whose $HOME is not accessible to exim and try to send her an
email. [I think one needs to make sure that if the home dir is /foo/bar, then /foo
needs to be inaccessible to exim, but take your pick.] I think this behaviour is
incorrect: why chdir() to someplace you immediately chdir() out of without doing
anything there? I could understand, in some situations, the need to check that
some directory is accessible, but no in this case. Moreover, this is not documented
anywhere (at least I could not find it, had to dig the source).

There is a workaround (add home_directory = / to maildir: -section of exim's
configuration file), but since accessing the home directory in the first place
is not necessary, I consider this a bug to be fixed.

-Juha


-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.63 #1 built 15-Aug-2006 20:40:36
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2006
Berkeley DB: Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 4.3.29: (September  6, 2005)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 GnuTLS move_frozen_messages
Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz dsearch nis nis0 passwd
Authenticators: cram_md5 plaintext
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
# /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
#
# Edit this file and /etc/mailname by hand and execute update-exim4.conf
# yourself or use 'dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config'
#
# Please note that this is _not_ a dpkg-conffile and that automatic changes
# to this file might happen. The code handling this will honor your local
# changes, so this is usually fine, but will break local schemes that mess
# around with multiple versions of the file.
#
# update-exim4.conf uses this file to determine variable values to replace
# the DEBCONFsomethingDEBCONF strings in the configuration template files.
#
# Most settings found in here do have corresponding questions in the
# Debconf configuration, but not all of them.
#
# This is a Debian specific file

dc_eximconfig_configtype='smarthost'
dc_other_hostnames='noether.tfy.utu.fi'
dc_local_interfaces='127.0.0.1'
dc_readhost=''
dc_relay_domains=''
dc_minimaldns='false'
dc_relay_nets=''
dc_smarthost='smtp.utu.fi'
CFILEMODE='644'
dc_use_split_config='true'
dc_hide_mailname='false'
dc_mailname_in_oh='true'
dc_localdelivery=maildir_home
MAILDIR_HOME_MAILDIR_LOCATION=/var/mail/juhaj/Mail
dc_maildir_home_maildir_location='/var/mail/$local_part/Mail'
dc_maildirhomemaildirlocation='/var/mail/$local_part/Mail'
mailname:noether.tfy.utu.fi

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17+juhaj+v1.0
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fi_FI.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages exim4 depends on:
ii  exim4-base                    4.63-2     support files for all exim MTA (v4
ii  exim4-daemon-light            4.63-2     lightweight exim MTA (v4) daemon

exim4 recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information