Symptoms

JIRA is unable to add an incoming mail server. The following error is returned: ""AuthenticationFailedException: [IN-USE] Couldn't open INBOX: Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information."

The following appears in the atlassian-jira.log:

Unable to connect to the server at mail.example.com due to the following exception: javax.mail.AuthenticationFailedException: [IN-USE] Couldn't open INBOX: Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information.

Cause

The user specified in the mail handler does not have the proper permissions.

Resolution

• Update directory permissions to allow user read/write permissions.

  chmod 0600 /var/spool/mail/*

  In the example above the user is granted read/write permission to the /var/spool/mail/ directory.