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doveadm sync: Both source and destination mail_path and mail_index_path point to same directory
by Szőts Ákos 09 Nov '25

09 Nov '25

Hi everyone, When I'm trying to synchronise my e-mails from a backup with doveadm sync, I get an error. Doveadmin sync command: doveadm -D sync -1 -f -a "Virtual/All" -R -u user(a)example.net -n inbox mdbox:/var/spool/mail/example.net/user_backup Error message: dsync: Error: cmd sync: Both source and destination mail_path and mail_index_path point to same directory: /var/spool/mail/example.net/user//mail/mailboxes (name space inbox { mail_path } is set explicitly?) Relevant config section: namespace inbox { separator = / inbox = yes # "home" is set in userdb mail_path = %{home}/mail mail_index_path = %{home}/index/inbox mailbox ... { ... } mailbox ... { ... } } mail_driver = mdbox According to the config, the two directories are explicitly set to be different. I verified and they exist and they are not symlinks. Do you know what causes this issue? Version: 2.4.2 Thank you, Ákos Hi everyone, When I'm trying to synchronise my e-mails from a backup with doveadm sync, I get an error. Doveadmin sync command: doveadm -D sync -1 -f -a "Virtual/All" -R -u [1]user(a)example.net -n inbox mdbox:/var/spool/mail/example.net/user_backup Error message: dsync: Error: cmd sync: Both source and destination mail_path and mail_index_path point to same directory: /var/spool/mail/example.net/user//mail/mailboxes (name space inbox { mail_path } is set explicitly?) Relevant config section: namespace inbox { separator = / inbox = yes # "home" is set in userdb mail_path = %{home}/mail mail_index_path = %{home}/index/inbox mailbox ... { ... } mailbox ... { ... } } mail_driver = mdbox According to the config, the two directories are explicitly set to be different. I verified and they exist and they are not symlinks. Do you know what causes this issue? Version: 2.4.2 Thank you, Akos References Visible links 1. mailto:user@example.net

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Using full email address as login
by Alex 07 Nov '25

07 Nov '25

Hi, I'm using dovecot-2.3.21.1 on fedora42. It seems that increasingly remote clients are only supporting the full email address as the login ID instead of just the username. One such example is Apollo.io, an AI sales platform that uses IMAP to connect to a remote server to send and receive emails. The documentation I've found on this appears to be deprecated or incomplete. Do I want to look for "shared namespace" documentation? Currently, emails are stored in /var/spool/mail/username. Does this need to change to something like /var/spool/domain.com/username? I'll also need to change postfix to use username(a)domain.com with sasl, I believe? Here is my current dovecot.conf. Ideas greatly appreciated. # 2.3.21.1 (d492236fa0): /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # Pigeonhole version 0.5.21.1 (49005e73) # OS: Linux 6.17.6-200.fc42.x86_64 x86_64 Fedora release 42 (Adams) # Hostname: orion.example.com auth_mechanisms = plain xoauth2 oauthbearer auth_verbose = yes default_vsz_limit = 1500 M mail_gid = mail mail_home = mail/ mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u mail_max_userip_connections = 500 mail_plugins = " listescape acl" mail_privileged_group = mail managesieve_notify_capability = mailto managesieve_sieve_capability = fileinto reject envelope encoded-character vacation subaddress comparator-i;ascii-numeric relational regex imap4flags copy include variables body enotify environment mailbox date index ihave duplicate mime foreverypart extracttext mbox_write_locks = fcntl namespace inbox { inbox = yes location = mailbox Drafts { special_use = \Drafts } mailbox Junk { special_use = \Junk } mailbox Sent { special_use = \Sent } mailbox "Sent Messages" { special_use = \Sent } mailbox Trash { special_use = \Trash } prefix = } passdb { driver = pam } protocols = imap pop3 service auth { unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth { group = postfix mode = 0660 user = postfix } } service imap-login { inet_listener imaps { address = 68.195.111.42 port = 993 } process_min_avail = 6 service_count = 0 } service pop3-login { inet_listener pop3 { address = 127.0.0.1 port = 110 } inet_listener pop3s { port = 995 } } ssl_cert = </etc/letsencrypt/example-fullchain.pem ssl_cipher_list = ALL:!LOW:!EXP:!aNULL:!RC4::!eNULL:!LOW:!3DES:!MD5:!EXP:!PSK:!SRP:!DSS ssl_key = # hidden, use -P to show it ssl_prefer_server_ciphers = yes userdb { driver = passwd } Thanks, Alex Hi, I'm using dovecot-2.3.21.1 on fedora42. It seems that increasingly remote clients are only supporting the full email address as the login ID instead of just the username. One such example is Apollo.io, an AI sales platform that uses IMAP to connect to a remote server to send and receive emails. The documentation I've found on this appears to be deprecated or incomplete. Do I want to look for "shared namespace" documentation? Currently, emails are stored in /var/spool/mail/username. Does this need to change to something like /var/spool/[1]domain.com/username? I'll also need to change postfix to use [2]username(a)domain.com with sasl, I believe? Here is my current dovecot.conf. Ideas greatly appreciated. # 2.3.21.1 (d492236fa0): /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # Pigeonhole version 0.5.21.1 (49005e73) # OS: Linux 6.17.6-200.fc42.x86_64 x86_64 Fedora release 42 (Adams) # Hostname: [3]orion.example.com auth_mechanisms = plain xoauth2 oauthbearer auth_verbose = yes default_vsz_limit = 1500 M mail_gid = mail mail_home = mail/ mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u mail_max_userip_connections = 500 mail_plugins = " listescape acl" mail_privileged_group = mail managesieve_notify_capability = mailto managesieve_sieve_capability = fileinto reject envelope encoded-character vacation subaddress comparator-i;ascii-numeric relational regex imap4flags copy include variables body enotify environment mailbox date index ihave duplicate mime foreverypart extracttext mbox_write_locks = fcntl namespace inbox { inbox = yes location = mailbox Drafts { special_use = \Drafts } mailbox Junk { special_use = \Junk } mailbox Sent { special_use = \Sent } mailbox "Sent Messages" { special_use = \Sent } mailbox Trash { special_use = \Trash } prefix = } passdb { driver = pam } protocols = imap pop3 service auth { unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth { group = postfix mode = 0660 user = postfix } } service imap-login { inet_listener imaps { address = 68.195.111.42 port = 993 } process_min_avail = 6 service_count = 0 } service pop3-login { inet_listener pop3 { address = 127.0.0.1 port = 110 } inet_listener pop3s { port = 995 } } ssl_cert = </etc/letsencrypt/example-fullchain.pem ssl_cipher_list = ALL:!LOW:!EXP:!aNULL:!RC4::!eNULL:!LOW:!3DES:!MD5:!EXP:!PSK:!SRP:!DSS ssl_key = # hidden, use -P to show it ssl_prefer_server_ciphers = yes userdb { driver = passwd } Thanks, Alex References Visible links 1. http://domain.com/username 2. mailto:username@domain.com 3. http://orion.example.com/

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2.4.2 upgrade oddity
by Andy Baugh 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

Howdy y'all, I noticed something odd with the userdb/passdb processing past the 2.4.2 CVE fix, etc. -- namely that the prefixing you previously needed to do to userdb returns, etc. when you set a cache_key is no longer necessary and in fact harmful. It is worth mentioning, as after looking into this a bit and realizing that it "should have been obvious" to me that this would have been the case. That said I didn't make the logical leap till doveadm screamed at me about it during mailbox creation after upgrade (can't very well do `doveadm mailbox create -s -u user(a)domain.test INBOX.spam` when your userdb returns `${CACHE_KEY}_mailbox/INBOX/spam/...` for the relevant config values, etc.). TL;DR: disabling the cache = do NOT prefix any userdb/passdb returns in accordance with cache_key you set. This is true for lua passdb/authdb or any other authdb, not just passwd/oauth2. Cheers, -- Thomas "Andy" Baugh | Software Development Engineer IV andy.baugh(a)webpros.com www.webpros.com

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doveadm sync issue
by Dan Whitehouse 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

Hi, I am running Dovecot on Debian trixie (dovecot-core/stable,now 1:2.4.1+dfsg1-6 amd64). Under the previous version, which I believe was 2.3, I was able to run a sync script with the following syntax: doveadm sync -u <user> remote:<user>@<host.tld> This worked very well and I was able to sync my mail. Having upgraded, this syntax produces the following error: dsync-server: invalid option -- ‘U' Error: doveadm: Unexpected or incomplete option: -U Even though my script doesn’t pass “-U” explicitly I believe that it is passed internally: https://github.com/dovecot/core/blob/main/src/doveadm/doveadm-settings.c#L1… core/src/doveadm/doveadm-settings.c at main · dovecot/core github.com Confusingly the online help still displays: doveadm dsync-server —help doveadm dsync-server [-r <rawlog path>] [-T <timeout secs>] [-U] Here we can see that the “-U” option (despite all the above) appears to have been removed from the code: https://github.com/dovecot/core/commit/4c04e4c30fd4817a8b0e11d04d9681173f69… global: Remove replicator · dovecot/core@4c04e4c github.com I have added the following to /etc/dovecot/local.conf: dsync_remote_cmd = "ssh -l%{login} %{host} doveadm dsync-server -u%{user}” (Note that I override the “-U”) and sync once again works properly. Many thanks for your attention, Dan Whitehouse

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2.4.2 breaks user iterations for LDAP
by cpfeiffer＠rev-crew.info 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

Hello everyone, Due to the fix for CVE-2025-30189, routines like userdb_ldap_preinit() call auth_cache_parse_key_and_fields() unconditionally, with the eventually called auth_cache_parse_key_exclude() erroring if a cache key could not be constructed. It’s also noteworthy that this call happens regardless of whether use_cache is set or not, and as of such failing to construct a cache key would cause an error even if use_cache = no was set for that database. This is however an issue for user iteration with LDAP, as documented here LDAP | Dovecot CE <https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.2/core/config/auth/databases/ldap.html#user-ite…> . Such a userdb only has iterate_filter fields that would inherently not be containing any user variables. The call to auth_cache_parse_key_and_fields() uses a combination of ldap_base and userdb_ldap_filter anyway (so whatever is in iterate_filter isn’t considered), and for an iteration userdb as described in the documentation, the latter would be empty. Alas, I ended up getting the rather confusing error * auth: Fatal: auth-cache: dc=rev-crew,dc=info: Cache key must contain at least one variable With dc=rev-crew,dc=info being my ldap_base setting for the iteration userdb. I’m not critically dependent on the user iteration, so I’ve commented the userdb out for now, but this would need fixing. Regards, Christian Pfeiffer Hello everyone, Due to the fix for CVE-2025-30189, routines like userdb_ldap_preinit() call auth_cache_parse_key_and_fields() unconditionally, with the eventually called auth_cache_parse_key_exclude() erroring if a cache key could not be constructed. It's also noteworthy that this call happens regardless of whether use_cache is set or not, and as of such failing to construct a cache key would cause an error even if use_cache = no was set for that database. This is however an issue for user iteration with LDAP, as documented here [1]LDAP | Dovecot CE. Such a userdb only has iterate_filter fields that would inherently not be containing any user variables. The call to auth_cache_parse_key_and_fields() uses a combination of ldap_base and userdb_ldap_filter anyway (so whatever is in iterate_filter isn't considered), and for an iteration userdb as described in the documentation, the latter would be empty. Alas, I ended up getting the rather confusing error o auth: Fatal: auth-cache: dc=rev-crew,dc=info: Cache key must contain at least one variable With dc=rev-crew,dc=info being my ldap_base setting for the iteration userdb. I'm not critically dependent on the user iteration, so I've commented the userdb out for now, but this would need fixing. Regards, Christian Pfeiffer References Visible links 1. https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.2/core/config/auth/databases/ldap.html#user-ite…

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Dovecot upgrade from 2.3.x to 2.4.x: and mailbox_alias plugin
by Gerhard Wiesinger 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

Hello, Regarding dovecot upgrade from 2.3.x to 2.4.x and mailbox_alias plugin: I've already converted my config and scripts but I'm still missing this config change: plugin { mailbox_alias_old = Spam mailbox_alias_new = Junk } I saw in the link https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.0/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html mailbox-alias plugin Depending on the use case, replacement may be the mailbox_special_use mailbox setting and/or Sieve filters. Any ideas what's the best alternative? Another question, is the following correct: mail_home = /home/vmail/%n mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir => mail_home = /home/vmail/%{user | username} mail_driver = maildir mail_path = ~/Maildir mail_inbox_path = ~/Maildir (Especially mail_inbox_path, I don't have a ".INBOX" directory currently, I guess .INBOX is now default. How to deal with this?) Thnx. Ciao, Gerhard

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Build failure due to non-constant initializers in unicode-transform.c
by adesh＠backuply.com 05 Nov '25

05 Nov '25

When building Dovecot 2.4.2 on modern compilers (GCC ≥ 5, Clang, or any C99/C11-compliant environment), the build fails in src/lib/unicode-transform.c due to the use of non-constant initializers in static const global variables. The affected lines define Hangul composition constants using other const variables instead of compile-time constants, which is not allowed in standard C99 and later. error log: unicode-transform.c:211:1: error: initializer element is not constant static const size_t uni_hangul_n_count = uni_hangul_v_count * uni_hangul_t_count; ^ unicode-transform.c:212:1: error: initializer element is not constant static const uint16_t uni_hangul_l_end = uni_hangul_l_base + uni_hangul_l_count; ^ unicode-transform.c:213:1: error: initializer element is not constant static const uint16_t uni_hangul_v_end = uni_hangul_v_base + uni_hangul_v_count; ^ unicode-transform.c:214:1: error: initializer element is not constant static const uint16_t uni_hangul_t_end = uni_hangul_t_base + uni_hangul_t_count; ^ This issue prevents building Dovecot 2.4.x on modern systems without non-standard compiler flags, breaking out-of-the-box builds on up-to-date Linux distributions.

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configuration fails at the last hurdle
by demo＠manx.net 04 Nov '25

04 Nov '25

as a newbie suddenly requiring a mail server the configuration of dovecot and postfix is proving elusive. if i get one element working another fails. i think it would help readers if i supply my status report and ask for suggestions as to how to ensure a remote client can access the mail just delivered from another remote in addition for mutt to see the mail on the sever. cat <<EOF > ~/mailserver-status.txt 📨 Mail Server Status – Ryzen2 (Ubuntu 25.10) Objective: To host email services independently, replacing Manx Telecom’s legacy offering. Rationale: Manx Telecom has been acquired by Jersey Telecom, with plans to charge £65 per annum per email address. This migration aims to preserve autonomy and reduce costs. ✅ Current Achievements - Mail Receipt Confirmed: Mail addressed to jsm(a)mckenzietrust.com (a domain owned by us) is successfully received via encrypted POP3S (port 995) using both Thunderbird and OpenSSL. - Maildir Workflow Operational: Messages arrive in Maildir/new and are moved every minute to Maildir/cur via a cron job. They are accessible locally using mutt. - SSL Layer Functional: POP3S handshake completes successfully, confirming certificate and encryption setup is sound. ⚠️ Known Issues - Remote Access Fails Silently: Thunderbird and OpenSSL clients connect but cannot retrieve messages from Maildir/cur or new. No errors are returned—access appears to die silently. - Dovecot Configuration Fragility: Any attempt to explicitly define mail_location in config files (e.g., 10-mail.conf) causes Dovecot to crash on startup. This behavior is consistent across both Ubuntu 25.04 and 25.10 builds. It is imperative not to attempt location overrides, as recovery requires reverting to a clean config state. - Post-Reboot Regression: Remote access was briefly functional but failed after a system reboot triggered by a firmware update. This suggests a state-dependent or ephemeral config success. 🧭 Configuration Notes - Dovecot and Postfix Versions: Packages from Ubuntu 25.04 were manually installed and locked to prevent auto-updates. This avoids compatibility issues with newer builds. - POP3S Listener Enabled: The following stanza is active in 10-master.conf: service pop3-login { inet_listener pop3 { port = 110 } inet_listener pop3s { port = 995 ssl = yes } } - SSL Configuration: ssl = yes ssl_server_cert_file = /etc/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem ssl_server_key_file = /etc/dovecot/private/dovecot.key These paths are valid and readable by root. 🧱 Constraints and Priorities - No Urgency: At least one month is available for debugging and refinement. - Web Server Stability Is Critical: The live web server must remain uninterrupted, as it hosts the McKenzie Trust’s public-facing structure. - Outbound Mail Deliverability: The domain currently uses DDNS. Without a PTR record, outbound mail from Ryzen2 may be rejected. A fixed IP or relay forwarding will be required. 🧩 Next Steps - Investigate mailbox visibility for remote clients—likely a permissions or UID mapping issue. - Consider enabling auth-master socket for privileged access if needed. - Explore relay options or static IP acquisition to ensure outbound mail acceptance. EOF regards jsm

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doveadm sync -1 -R only downloads Inbox but not Sent Items
by r.barclay＠habmalnefrage.de 02 Nov '25

02 Nov '25

Hi, When my free mail provider mailbox runs out of free space, I have my local Dovecot server one-way sync that free mail mailbox and then I delete the contents of the free mail mailbox. So I can archive my emails in an "offline archive". Initially, I used "doveadm backup", but later always used: doveadm -Dv sync -u offline(a)example.org -1 -f -R imapc: At large, this works. But only during the first "backup" the "Sent" folder was synced as well. Nowdays, it only downloads the Inbox, but not my Sent Items. I tried adding the "-N" parameter, but that said: "Fatal: -N parameter requires syncing with remote host" I'm on Debian 12 and Dovecot 2.3.x: 1:2.3.19.1+dfsg1-2.1+deb12u1 amd64. What could I check or try? And one more question: To better understand the debug output: What is "brain M" and "brain S"? Yours, Reg

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"Synchronization corrupted index header" with mdbox: thousands of deleted e-mails reappeared in INBOX
by Ákos Szőts 01 Nov '25

01 Nov '25

Hi everyone, Suddenly, the following messages appeared in my Dovecot error log: master: Warning: Killed with signal 15 (by pid=0 uid=0 code=kill) Error: Mailbox Trash: Synchronization corrupted index header [...]/Trash/dbox-Mails/dovecot.index: uidvalidity=0, but next_uid=73 Warning: Mailbox Trash: fscking index file [...]/Trash/dbox-Mails/dovecot.index Warning: mdbox([...]/mail/storage): rebuilding indexes: Mailbox Trash index was fsck'd Warning: mdbox([...]/mail/storage): fscking index file [...]/index/inbox/storage/dovecot.map.index Error: Mailbox INBOX: [...]/INBOX/dbox-Mails/dovecot.index reset, view is now inconsistent The first message is because I restarted the container. Since then, Thunderbird shows thousands of previously deleted e-mails again in INBOX where all my messages are marked as unread. - Do you know what can cause it and how can I avoid to happen again? - Is the used mdbox storage engine that fragile? Is the fault tolerance of other engines better? I have a backup from some days ago. Is it possible to somehow revert back to it and sync the new e-mails on top of those? Version: 2.4.2. Thank you, Ákos

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