sasl - Dovecot doesn't create /var/spool/postfix/private/auth

I'm moving an Ubuntu 14.04 postfix mail installation from one machine to another. The current setup works fine pretty much with Ubuntu's default postfix and dovecot setup so that users can use SMTP auth, etc.

So I copied the relevant configuration files over to the new machine (which is also running Ubuntu 14.04) and started up postfix there after making the necessary DNS changes.

But I get this in the mail log of the new machine:

Oct 28 14:18:50 lorina postfix/smtpd[13445]: warning: SASL: Connect to private/auth failed: No such file or directory

Oct 28 14:18:50 lorina postfix/smtpd[13445]: fatal: no SASL authentication mechanisms

Oct 28 14:18:51 lorina postfix/master[13440]: warning: process /usr/lib/postfix/smtpd pid 13445 exit status 1


Oct 28 14:18:51 lorina postfix/master[13440]: warning: /usr/lib/postfix/smtpd: bad command startup -- throttling

Postfix is set to use the following:

smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth

and in the dovecot config I have:

  # Postfix smtp-auth
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
    mode = 0666
  }

However, I see that /var/spool/postfix/private/auth doesn't exist on the new machine.

I've tried rebooting the machine in case any services weren't working properly. When does this file get made? How can I crate it?

Answer

It looks like the error being reported was misleading. In fact, there was a path to an SSL certificate that dovecot wasn't finding so it wasn't starting properly and therefore not creating the socket in /var/spool/postfix/private/auth.