[Mimedefang] AWL and local.cf - cannot create lockfile

[Gary Funck]

This is a follow up to a couple of year old thread.
(Although this issue may be different in some important ways.)

After a recent upgrade to mimedefang-2.68-1.el5.rf
(on CentOS 5 system), we're seeing the following
error message in the logs:

Apr  5 16:19:18 intrepid mimedefang-multiplexor[10407]: Slave 0 stderr:
auto-whitelist: open of auto-whitelist file failed: locker:
safe_lock: cannot create lockfile
/var/spool/MD-Quarantine/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.mutex:
Permission denied

Both /var/spool/MD-Quarantine and /var/spool/MD-Quarantine/.spamassassin
are owned by the "defang" user.  So is the autowhitelist DB.
But the pid file is owned by root:

$ ls -l /var/spool/MD-Quarantine/.spamassassin
-rw------- 1 defang defang 12288 Apr  5 13:41 auto-whitelist
-rw------- 1 root   root       6 Apr  5 14:14 auto-whitelist.mutex

The process with the pid recorded in the .mutex file
no longer exists.

It is curious that this lock file is owned by root,
but mimedefang runs as the defang user.

I don't know how to tell if white-listing is on, and don't
know why/how this .spamassassin directory ends up under
/var/spool/MD-Quarantine.  On this mail server, we don't
want to run AWL under mimedefang any way, so I'd like some
tips on how to do that.

All help/suggestions appreciated.  Thanks.