Why do I get an error when I try to postmap sasl password file with postfix?

Question

I installed postfix freshly as satellite system. I need to authenticate on my mail providers smpt. There postfix needs to build a sasl database from my sasl-passwd file. But it fails to do just that. How do I fix this error (last line)?:

root@confus:/etc/postfix# echo 'smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes' >> main.cf
root@confus:/etc/postfix# echo 'smtp_sasl_security_options = noplaintext noanonymous' >> main.cf
root@confus:/etc/postfix# echo 'smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd' >> main.cf
root@confus:/etc/postfix# ll
total 116
drwxr-xr-x   3 root   root    4096 2011-06-03 13:56 ./
drwxr-xr-x 154 root   root   12288 2011-06-03 13:33 ../
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root     318 2011-06-03 13:32 dynamicmaps.cf
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root    1562 2011-06-03 13:53 main.cf
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root    5563 2011-06-03 13:32 master.cf
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root   19509 2011-05-10 15:06 postfix-files
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root   root    8729 2011-05-10 15:06 postfix-script*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root   root   25752 2011-05-10 15:06 post-install*
drwxr-xr-x   2 root   root    4096 2011-05-10 15:06 sasl/
-rw-------   1 confus confus    51 2011-06-03 13:56 sasl_passwd
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root      28 2011-06-03 13:43 sender_canonical
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root   12288 2011-06-03 13:47 sender_canonical.db
root@confus:/etc/postfix# postmap sasl_passwd 
postmap: fatal: open database sasl_passwd.db: Permission denied
root@confus:/etc/postfix# postmap hash:sasl_passwd 
postmap: fatal: open database sasl_passwd.db: Permission denied

inb4 'sudo': Notice the "root@confus"

Solution

"You need to make sure that postfix user is able to read that file. You can post the output of sudo ls -l /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd.db to get more help."

And from the comments: "Change the owner of the config directory of postfix to postfix and it works."

Source

Comments

[con-f-use]

Indeed it does. But wow, that's just babytown frolics. Why are the permissions not set in the first place?

[TerranRich]

Made my problem worse. In addition to the "No such file or directory" error, I'm also getting: postmap: warning: /etc/postfix/dynamicmaps.cf: file is owned or writable by non-root users -- skipping this file