Hello Klaus,

this leads to

# 2.4.1-4 (7d8c0e5759): /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# Pigeonhole version 2.4.1-4 (0a86619f)
doveconf: Fatal: Error in configuration file
/etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-ssl.conf line 23: cert_file : Unknown
setting: cert_file  (ssl_server_cert_file  not found either.)

So there definitely seems to be something going wrong here. What confuses me is that it doesn't complain about the certificates not being found but just complaining about the setting being unknown.

After copying-pasting your example into my config, creating the directories and adding symlinks to the actual certificates the error disappeared. It continues working now with the original config and with the symlinks removed.

It must have been some spurious parsing error, I can't find any difference between before and now. Even my original conf without ssl_server { ... } works now again.

Sorry for wasting your time.

Best, David

On 01/02/2026 22:08, Klaus Tachtler wrote:

Hi David,

try:

ssl_server { cert_file = /etc/dovecot/ssl/certs/fullchain.pem key_file = /etc/dovecot/ssl/private/privkey.pem }

Greetings Klaus.

-- David Weingut

Hello Klaus,

this leads to

 # 2.4.1-4 (7d8c0e5759): /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
 # Pigeonhole version 2.4.1-4 (0a86619f)
 doveconf: Fatal: Error in configuration file
 /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-ssl.conf line 23: cert_file : Unknown setting:
 cert_file  (ssl_server_cert_file  not found either.)

So there definitely seems to be something going wrong here. What confuses me is that it doesn't complain about the certificates not being found but just complaining about the setting being unknown.

After copying-pasting your example into my config, creating the directories and adding symlinks to the actual certificates the error disappeared. It continues working now with the original config and with the symlinks removed.

It must have been some spurious parsing error, I can't find any difference between before and now. Even my original conf without ssl_server { ... } works now again.

Sorry for wasting your time.

Best, David

On 01/02/2026 22:08, Klaus Tachtler wrote:

Hi David,

try:

ssl_server { cert_file = /etc/dovecot/ssl/certs/fullchain.pem key_file = /etc/dovecot/ssl/private/privkey.pem }

Greetings Klaus.

-- David Weingut