Trying to figure out how to convert an existing mbox system to maildir Below is my dovecot.conf file. Tried adding this at the bottom of the file and nothing happens.

plugin { convert_mail = mbox:/vhome/%d/home/%n:INBOX=/vhome/%d/home/%n/INBOX convert_skip_broken_mailboxes=yes }

What am I doing wrong?

Dovecot 1.0 configuration file

'#' character and everything after it is treated as comments. Extra spaces

and tabs are ignored. If you want to use either of these explicitly,

put the

value inside quotes, eg.: key = "# char and trailing whitespace "

Default values are shown after each value, it's not required to uncomment

any of the lines. Exception to this are paths, they're just examples

with real defaults being based on configure options. The paths listed here

are for configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var

--with-ssldir=/etc/ssl

Base directory where to store runtime data.

#base_dir = /var/run/dovecot/

Protocols we want to be serving:

imap imaps pop3 pop3s

protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s

IP or host address where to listen in for connections. It's not currently

possible to specify multiple addresses. "*" listens in all IPv4

interfaces.

"[::]" listens in all IPv6 interfaces, but may also listen in all IPv4

interfaces depending on the operating system. If you want to specify

ports

for each service, you will need to configure these settings inside the

protocol imap/pop3 { ... } section, so you can specify different ports

for IMAP/POP3.

#listen = *

IP or host address where to listen in for SSL connections. Defaults

to above if not specified.

#ssl_listen =

Disable SSL/TLS support.

#ssl_disable = no

PEM encoded X.509 SSL/TLS certificate and private key. They're opened

before

dropping root privileges, so keep the key file unreadable by anyone but

root. Included doc/mkcert.sh can be used to easily generate self-signed

certificate, just make sure to update the domains in dovecot-openssl.cnf

#ssl_cert_file = /etc/pki/dovecot/dovecot.pem #ssl_key_file = /etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem

ssl_cert_file = /usr/share/ssl/certs/imapd.pem ssl_key_file = /usr/share/ssl/certs/imapd.pem

File containing trusted SSL certificate authorities. Usually not needed.

#ssl_ca_file =

Request client to send a certificate.

#ssl_verify_client_cert = no

SSL parameter file. Master process generates this file for login

processes.

It contains Diffie Hellman and RSA parameters.

#ssl_parameters_file = /var/run/dovecot/ssl-parameters.dat

How often to regenerate the SSL parameters file. Generation is quite CPU

intensive operation. The value is in hours, 0 disables regeneration

entirely.

#ssl_parameters_regenerate = 24

SSL ciphers to use

#ssl_cipher_list = all:!low

Disable LOGIN command and all other plaintext authentications unless

SSL/TLS is used (LOGINDISABLED capability). Note that 127.*.*.* and

IPv6 ::1 addresses are considered secure, this setting has no effect if

you connect from those addresses.

disable_plaintext_auth = no

Use this logfile instead of syslog(). /dev/stderr can be used if you

want to

use stderr for logging (ONLY /dev/stderr - otherwise it is closed).

log_path = /var/log/dovecot

For informational messages, use this logfile instead of the default

info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot

Prefix for each line written to log file. % codes are in strftime(3)

format.

#log_timestamp = "%b %d %H:%M:%S "

Login processes

Directory where authentication process places authentication UNIX sockets

which login needs to be able to connect to. The sockets are created when

running as root, so you don't have to worry about permissions. Note that

everything in this directory is deleted when Dovecot is started.

#login_dir = /var/run/dovecot/login

chroot login process to the login_dir. Only reason not to do this is

if you

wish to run the whole Dovecot without roots.

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Rootless

#login_chroot = yes

User to use for the login process. Create a completely new user for this,

and don't use it anywhere else. The user must also belong to a group where

only it has access, it's used to control access for authentication

process.

Note that this user is NOT used to access mails.

http://wiki.dovecot.org/UserIds

#login_user = dovecot

Set max. process size in megabytes. If you don't use

login_process_per_connection you might need to grow this.

login_process_size = 64

Should each login be processed in it's own process (yes), or should one

login process be allowed to process multiple connections (no)? Yes is more

secure, espcially with SSL/TLS enabled. No is faster since there's no need

to create processes all the time.

login_process_per_connection = no

Number of login processes to create. If login_process_per_user is

yes, this is the number of extra processes waiting for users to log in.

#login_processes_count = 3

Maximum number of extra login processes to create. The extra process count

usually stays at login_processes_count, but when multiple users start

logging

in at the same time more extra processes are created. To prevent

fork-bombing

we check only once in a second if new processes should be created - if all

of them are used at the time, we double their amount until limit set

by this

setting is reached. This setting is used only if login_process_per_use

is yes. #login_max_processes_count = 128

Maximum number of connections allowed in login state. When this limit is

reached, the oldest connections are dropped. If login_process_per_user

is no, this is a per-process value, so the absolute maximum number of

users

logging in actually login_processes_count * max_logging_users.

#login_max_logging_users = 256

Greeting message for clients.

#login_greeting = Dovecot ready.

Space-separated list of elements we want to log. The elements which have

a non-empty variable value are joined together to form a comma-separated

string.

#login_log_format_elements = user=<%u> method=%m rip=%r lip=%l %c

Login log format. %$ contains login_log_format_elements string, %s

contains

the data we want to log.

#login_log_format = %$: %s

Mail processes

Maximum number of running mail processes. When this limit is reached,

new users aren't allowed to log in.

#max_mail_processes = 1024

Show more verbose process titles (in ps). Currently shows user name and

IP address. Useful for seeing who are actually using the IMAP processes

(eg. shared mailboxes or if same uid is used for multiple accounts).

#verbose_proctitle = no

Show protocol level SSL errors.

#verbose_ssl = no

Valid UID range for users, defaults to 500 and above. This is mostly

to make sure that users can't log in as daemons or other system users.

Note that denying root logins is hardcoded to dovecot binary and can't

be done even if first_valid_uid is set to 0.

#first_valid_uid = 500 #last_valid_uid = 0

Valid GID range for users, defaults to non-root/wheel. Users having

non-valid GID as primary group ID aren't allowed to log in. If user

belongs to supplementary groups with non-valid GIDs, those groups are

not set.

#first_valid_gid = 1 #last_valid_gid = 0

Grant access to these extra groups for mail processes. Typical use

would be

to give "mail" group write access to /var/mail to be able to create

dotlocks. #mail_extra_groups =

':' separated list of directories under which chrooting is allowed for

mail

processes (ie. /var/mail will allow chrooting to /var/mail/foo/bar too).

This setting doesn't affect login_chroot or auth_chroot variables.

WARNING: Never add directories here which local users can modify, that

may lead to root exploit. Usually this should be done only if you don't

allow shell access for users. See doc/configuration.txt for more

information. #valid_chroot_dirs =

Default chroot directory for mail processes. This can be overridden for

specific users in user database by giving /./ in user's home directory

(eg. /home/./user chroots into /home). Note that usually there is no real

need to do chrooting, Dovecot doesn't allow users to access files outside

their mail directory anyway.

#mail_chroot =

Enable mail process debugging. This can help you figure out why Dovecot

isn't finding your mails.

#mail_debug = no

Default MAIL environment to use when it's not set. By leaving this empty

dovecot tries to do some automatic detection as described in

doc/mail-storages.txt. There's a few special variables you can use, eg.:

%u - username

%n - user part in user@domain, same as %u if there's no domain

%d - domain part in user@domain, empty if there's no domain

%h - home directory

See doc/variables.txt for full list. Some examples:

default_mail_env = maildir:/var/mail/%1u/%u/Maildir

default_mail_env = mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

default_mail_env = mbox:/var/mail/%d/%n/:INDEX=/var/indexes/%d/%n

default_mail_env = mbox:/vhome/%d/home/%n:INBOX=/vhome/%d/home/%n/INBOX:INDEX=/nobackup/imap-cache/%d-%n

If you need to set multiple mailbox locations or want to change default

namespace settings, you can do it by defining namespace sections:

You can have private, shared and public namespaces. The only difference

between them is how Dovecot announces them to client via NAMESPACE

extension. Shared namespaces are meant for user-owned mailboxes which are

shared to other users, while public namespaces are for more globally

accessible mailboxes.

REMEMBER: If you add any namespaces, the default namespace must be added

explicitly, ie. default_mail_env does nothing unless you have a namespace

without a location setting. Default namespace is simply done by having a

namespace with empty prefix.

#namespace private {

Hierarchy separator to use. You should use the same separator for all

namespaces or some clients get confused. '/' is usually a good one.

#separator = /

Prefix required to access this namespace. This needs to be

different for

all namespaces. For example "Public/".

#prefix =

Physical location of the mailbox. This is in same format as

default_mail_env, which is also the default for it.

#location =

There can be only one INBOX, and this setting defines which namespace

has it.

#inbox = yes

If namespace is hidden, it's not advertised to clients via NAMESPACE

extension or shown in LIST replies. This is mostly useful when

converting

from another server with different namespaces which you want to

depricate

but still keep working. For example you can create hidden

namespaces with

prefixes "~/mail/", "~%u/mail/" and "mail/".

#hidden = yes #}

Space-separated list of fields to initially save into cache file.

Currently

these fields are allowed:

flags, date.sent, date.received, size.virtual, size.physical

mime.parts, imap.body, imap.bodystructure

Different IMAP clients work in different ways, so they benefit from

different cached fields. Some do not benefit from them at all. Caching

more

than necessary generates useless disk I/O, so you don't want to do that

either.

Dovecot attempts to automatically figure out what client wants and it

keeps

only that. However the first few times a mailbox is opened, Dovecot hasn't

yet figured out what client needs, so it may not perform optimally. If you

know what fields the majority of your clients need, it may be useful

to set

these fields by hand. If client doesn't actually use them, Dovecot will

eventually drop them.

Usually you should just leave this field alone. The potential benefits are

typically unnoticeable.

#mail_cache_fields =

Space-separated list of fields that Dovecot should never save to cache

file.

Useful if you want to save disk space at the cost of more I/O when the

fields

needed.

#mail_never_cache_fields =

Like mailbox_check_interval, but used for IDLE command.

#mailbox_idle_check_interval = 30

Allow full filesystem access to clients. There's no access checks

other than

what the operating system does for the active UID/GID. It works with both

maildir and mboxes, allowing you to prefix mailboxes names with eg. /path/

or ~user/.

#mail_full_filesystem_access = no

Maximum allowed length for mail keyword name. It's only forced when trying

to create new keywords.

#mail_max_keyword_length = 50

Save mails with CR+LF instead of plain LF. This makes sending those mails

take less CPU, especially with sendfile() syscall with Linux and FreeBSD.

But it also creates a bit more disk I/O which may just make it slower.

#mail_save_crlf = no

Use mmap() instead of read() to read mail files. read() seems to be a bit

faster with my Linux/x86 and it's better with NFS, so that's the default.

Note that OpenBSD 3.3 and older don't work right with mail_read_mmaped

= yes. #mail_read_mmaped = no

Don't use mmap() at all. This is required if you store indexes in remote

filesystems (NFS or clustered filesystem).

#mmap_disable = no

Don't write() to mmaped files. This is required for some operating systems

which use separate caches for them, such as OpenBSD.

#mmap_no_write = no

Locking method for index files. Alternatives are fcntl, flock and dotlock.

Dotlocking uses some tricks which may create more disk I/O than other

locking

methods.

#lock_method = fcntl

By default LIST command returns all entries in maildir beginning with dot.

Enabling this option makes Dovecot return only entries which are

directories.

This is done by stat()ing each entry, so it causes more disk I/O.

(For systems setting struct dirent->d_type, this check is free and it's

done always regardless of this setting)

#maildir_stat_dirs = no

Copy mail to another folders using hard links. This is much faster than

actually copying the file. This is problematic only if something modifies

the mail in one folder but doesn't want it modified in the others. I don't

know any MUA which would modify mail files directly. IMAP protocol also

requires that the mails don't change, so it would be problematic in

any case.

If you care about performance, enable it.

#maildir_copy_with_hardlinks = no

Which locking methods to use for locking mbox. There's four available:

dotlock: Create <mailbox>.lock file. This is the oldest and most NFS-safe

solution. If you want to use /var/mail/ like directory, the

users

will need write access to that directory.

fcntl : Use this if possible. Works with NFS too if lockd is used.

flock : May not exist in all systems. Doesn't work with NFS.

lockf : May not exist in all systems. Doesn't work with NFS.

You can use multiple locking methods; if you do the order they're declared

in is important to avoid deadlocks if other MTAs/MUAs are using multiple

locking methods as well. Some operating systems don't allow using some of

them simultaneously.

#mbox_read_locks = fcntl #mbox_write_locks = dotlock fcntl

Maximum time in seconds to wait for lock (all of them) before aborting.

#mbox_lock_timeout = 300

If dotlock exists but the mailbox isn't modified in any way, override the

lock file after this many seconds.

#mbox_dotlock_change_timeout = 30

When mbox changes unexpectedly we have to fully read it to find out what

changed. If the mbox is large this can take a long time. Since the change

is usually just a newly appended mail, it'd be faster to simply read the

new mails. If this setting is enabled, Dovecot does this but still safely

fallbacks to re-reading the whole mbox file whenever something in mbox

isn't

how it's expected to be. The only real downside to this setting is that if

some other MUA changes message flags, Dovecot doesn't notice it

immediately.

Note that a full sync is done with SELECT, EXAMINE, EXPUNGE and CHECK

commands.

#mbox_dirty_syncs = yes

Like mbox_dirty_syncs, but don't do full syncs even with SELECT, EXAMINE,

EXPUNGE or CHECK commands. If this is set, mbox_dirty_syncs is ignored.

#mbox_very_dirty_syncs = no

Delay writing mbox headers until doing a full write sync (EXPUNGE and

CHECK

commands and when closing the mailbox). This is especially useful for POP3

where clients often delete all mails. The downside is that our changes

aren't immediately visible to other MUAs.

#mbox_lazy_writes = yes

umask to use for mail files and directories

umask = 077

Drop all privileges before exec()ing the mail process. This is mostly

meant for debugging, otherwise you don't get core dumps. It could be a

small

security risk if you use single UID for multiple users, as the users could

ptrace() each others processes then.

#mail_drop_priv_before_exec = no

Set max. process size in megabytes. Most of the memory goes to mmap()ing

files, so it shouldn't harm much even if this limit is set pretty high.

#mail_process_size = 256

Log prefix for mail processes. See doc/variables.txt for list of possible

variables you can use.

#mail_log_prefix = "%Us(%u): "

IMAP specific settings

protocol imap {

Login executable location.

#login_executable = /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login

IMAP executable location

#mail_executable = /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap

This would write rawlogs into ~/dovecot.rawlog/ directory:

#mail_executable = /usr/libexec/dovecot/rawlog /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap

Maximum IMAP command line length in bytes. Some clients generate

very long

command lines with huge mailboxes, so you may need to raise this if

you get

"Too long argument" or "IMAP command line too large" errors often.

#imap_max_line_length = 65536

Support for dynamically loadable modules.

#mail_use_modules = no #mail_modules = /usr/lib/dovecot/imap

Send IMAP capabilities in greeting message. This makes it

unnecessary for

clients to request it with CAPABILITY command, so it saves one

round-trip.

Many clients however don't understand it and ask the CAPABILITY anyway.

#login_greeting_capability = no

Workarounds for various client bugs:

delay-newmail:

Send EXISTS/RECENT new mail notifications only when replying to NOOP

and CHECK commands. Some clients ignore them otherwise, for example

OSX Mail. Outlook Express breaks more badly though, without this it

may show user "Message no longer in server" errors. Note that

OE6 still

breaks even with this workaround if synchronization is set to

"Headers Only".

outlook-idle:

Outlook and Outlook Express never abort IDLE command, so if no mail

arrives in half a hour, Dovecot closes the connection. This is still

fine, except Outlook doesn't connect back so you don't see if

new mail

arrives.

netscape-eoh:

Netscape 4.x breaks if message headers don't end with the empty

"end of

headers" line. Normally all messages have this, but setting this

workaround makes sure that Netscape never breaks by adding the

line if

it doesn't exist. This is done only for FETCH BODY[HEADER.FIELDS..]

commands. Note that RFC says this shouldn't be done.

#imap_client_workarounds = outlook-idle }

POP3 specific settings

protocol pop3 {

Login executable location.

#login_executable = /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login

POP3 executable location

#mail_executable = /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3

Don't try to set mails non-recent or seen with POP3 sessions. This is

mostly intended to reduce disk I/O. With maildir it doesn't move files

from new/ to cur/, with mbox it doesn't write Status-header.

#pop3_no_flag_updates = no

Support LAST command which exists in old POP3 specs, but has been

removed

from new ones. Some clients still wish to use this though. Enabling this

makes RSET command clear all \Seen flags from messages.

#pop3_enable_last = no

POP3 UIDL format to use. You can use following variables:

%v - Mailbox UIDVALIDITY

%u - Mail UID

%m - MD5 sum of the mailbox headers in hex (mbox only)

%f - filename (maildir only)

If you want UIDL compatibility with other POP3 servers, use:

UW's ipop3d : %08Xv%08Xu

Courier version 0 : %f

Courier version 1 : %u

Courier version 2 : %v-%u

Cyrus (<= 2.1.3) : %u

Cyrus (>= 2.1.4) : %v.%u

Note that Outlook 2003 seems to have problems with %v.%u format which is

Dovecot's default, so if you're building a new server it would be a good

idea to change this. %08Xu%08Xv should be pretty fail-safe.

pop3_uidl_format = %v.%u

POP3 logout format string:

%t - number of TOP commands

%T - number of bytes sent to client as a result of TOP command

%r - number of RETR commands

%R - number of bytes sent to client as a result of RETR command

%d - number of deleted messages

%m - number of messages (before deletion)

%s - mailbox size in bytes (before deletion)

#pop3_logout_format = top=%t/%T, retr=%r/%R, del=%d/%m, size=%s

Support for dynamically loadable modules.

#mail_use_modules = no #mail_modules = /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3

Workarounds for various client bugs:

outlook-no-nuls:

Outlook and Outlook Express hang if mails contain NUL characters.

This setting replaces them with 0x80 character.

oe-ns-eoh:

Outlook Express and Netscape Mail breaks if end of headers-line is

missing. This option simply sends it if it's missing.

pop3_client_workarounds = outlook-no-nuls

}

Authentication processes

Executable location

#auth_executable = /usr/libexec/dovecot/dovecot-auth

Set max. process size in megabytes.

#auth_process_size = 256

Authentication cache size in kilobytes.

#auth_cache_size = 0

Time to live in seconds for cached data. After this many seconds a cached

record is forced out of cache.

#auth_cache_ttl = 3600

Space separated list of realms for SASL authentication mechanisms that

need

them. You can leave it empty if you don't want to support multiple realms.

Many clients simply use the first one listed here, so keep the default

realm

first.

#auth_realms =

Default realm/domain to use if none was specified. This is used for both

SASL realms and appending @domain to username in plaintext logins.

#auth_default_realm =

List of allowed characters in username. If the user-given username

contains

a character not listed in here, the login automatically fails. This is

just

an extra check to make sure user can't exploit any potential quote

escaping

vulnerabilities with SQL/LDAP databases. If you want to allow all

characters,

set this value to empty.

#auth_username_chars = abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890.-_@

Username character translations before it's looked up from databases. The

value contains series of from -> to characters. For example "#@/@" means

that '#' and '/' characters are translated to '@'.

auth_username_translation = #@/@

Username to use for users logging in with ANONYMOUS SASL mechanism

#auth_anonymous_username = anonymous

More verbose logging. Useful for figuring out why authentication isn't

working.

auth_verbose = yes

Even more verbose logging for debugging purposes. Shows for example SQL

queries.

#auth_debug = no

Maximum number of dovecot-auth worker processes. They're used to execute

blocking passdb and userdb queries (eg. MySQL and PAM). They're

automatically created and destroyed as needed.

#auth_worker_max_count = 30

auth default {

Space separated list of wanted authentication mechanisms:

plain digest-md5 cram-md5 apop anonymous

mechanisms = plain

Password database is used to verify user's password (and nothing more).

You can have multiple passdbs and userdbs. This is useful if you want to

allow both system users (/etc/passwd) and virtual users to login without

duplicating the system users into virtual database.

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Authentication

PAM authentication. Preferred nowadays by most systems.

Note that PAM can only be used to verify if user's password is correct,

so it can't be used as userdb. If you don't want to use a separate user

database (passwd usually), you can use static userdb.

Linuxconf passwd-like file with specified location

passdb passwd-file { args = /etc/vmail/shadow.%d }

Linuxconf passwd-like file with specified location

userdb passwd-file { args = /etc/vmail/passwd.%d }

User to use for the process. This user needs access to only user and

password databases, nothing else. Only shadow and pam authentication

requires roots, so use something else if possible. Note that passwd

authentication with BSDs internally accesses shadow files, which also

requires roots. Note that this user is NOT used to access mails.

That user is specified by userdb above.

user = root

Number of authentication processes to create

#count = 1

}

It's possible to export the authentication interface to other programs,

for example SMTP server which supports talking to Dovecot. Client socket

handles the actual authentication - you give it a username and password

and it returns OK or failure. So it's pretty safe to allow anyone

access to

it. Master socket is used to a) query if given client was successfully

authenticated, b) userdb lookups.

listener sockets will be created by Dovecot's master process using the

settings given inside the auth section

auth_debug_passwords = yes #auth_master_user_separator=*

auth default_with_listener { mechanisms = plain

passdb passwd-file {

# Master users that can log in as anyone

args = /etc/dovecot.masterusers

master = yes

#pass =yes

}

passdb passwd-file { # Path for passwd-file args = /etc/vmail/shadow.%d }

userdb passwd-file { # Path for passwd-file args = /etc/vmail/passwd.%d }

socket listen { master { path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master mode = 0666 } }

}

protocol lda {

UNIX socket path to master authentication server to find users.

auth_socket_path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master

}