a) google: "dovecot imap configuration" brought an article from 2005 as the first item:
while I like debian and a bit of history you may want to ask yourself how to improve your site as the primary hit from google. FYI: years ago I had great results in the top of google searches - and then I made a major error - I moved my site to a new url and google forgot me.
b) using your http://wiki.dovecot.org/QuickConfiguration as a guide:
I built dovecot using --prefix=/opt (I abhor /usr/local these days - that is so 1984ish). The applications got installed in /opt/bin
root@x066:/data/prj/aixtools/dovecot/core# ls -ltr /opt total 36 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 20 14:33 lib drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 20 14:33 include drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Nov 20 14:33 share drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 20 14:33 libexec drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 20 14:33 sbin drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 20 14:33 bin
Are the directories 'make install' touched or made.
root@x066:/data/prj/aixtools/dovecot/core# /opt/bin/doveconf -n
# 2.3.devel (92c8109): /opt/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf doveconf: Fatal: open(/opt/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf) failed: No such file or directory
where are example configs?
root@x066:/data/prj/aixtools/dovecot/core# find /opt -name example-config root@x066:/data/prj/aixtools/dovecot/core#
Not in /opt
How about a default config?
root@x066:/data/prj/aixtools/dovecot/core# find / -name dovecot /etc/init.d/dovecot /etc/pam.d/dovecot /etc/default/dovecot /etc/dovecot /var/lib/dovecot ^C
Seems to be /etc/dovecot
root@x066:/data/prj/aixtools/dovecot/core# ls -l /etc/dovecot total 40 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 30 2015 conf.d -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4180 Jun 8 2014 dovecot.conf -rw-r----- 1 root dovecot 410 Jun 8 2014 dovecot-db.conf.ext -rw-r----- 1 root dovecot 782 Jun 8 2014 dovecot-dict-sql.conf.ext -rw-r--r-- 1 root dovecot 1363 Apr 30 2015 dovecot.pem -rw-r----- 1 root dovecot 5348 Jun 8 2014 dovecot-sql.conf.ext drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Apr 30 2015 private -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 121 Jun 8 2014 README
and finally - read README to find the examples:
root@x066:/data/prj/aixtools/dovecot/core# cat /etc/dovecot/README Configuration files go to this directory. See example configuration files in /usr/share/doc/dovecot-core/example-config/
Conclusion:
--prefix=/opt is not applied everywhere.
- More first impressions as I come to them - if you want them - as I hope this helps make dovecot better!
Michael