strange file-permission problem

[Mel]

On Tuesday 15 April 2008 20:55:01 Mikhail Teterin wrote:

> I've encountered a problem, which went ahead most of the things I know
> about Unix file permissions:
>
>  dovecot at bonkers:run/dovecot/login (10) ls -l ssl-parameters.dat
>  -rw-r-----  2 root  dovecot  230 Apr 13 00:33 ssl-parameters.dat
>  dovecot at bonkers:run/dovecot/login (11) groups
>  dovecot
>  dovecot at bonkers:run/dovecot/login (12) id
>  uid=143(dovecot) gid=9005(dovecot) groups=9005(dovecot)
>  dovecot at bonkers:run/dovecot/login (13) cat ssl-parameters.dat > /dev/null
>  cat: ssl-parameters.dat: Permission denied
>  dovecot at bonkers:run/dovecot/login (14) ls -ld
>  drwxr-x---  2 root  dovecot  512 Apr 15 14:44 .
>
> I had to set the mode of ssl-parameters.dat to 644 to allow dovecot-users
> to login, but it should not be needed -- the file should be readable by
> members of the group "dovecot" (such as user "dovecot").

Since the default GID for dovecot is 143, I suspect you have two dovecot 
groups. ls -ln should show you the numeric group id.
-- 
Mel

Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules
    and never get to the software part.