Doveadm sync, Error: read(remote) failed: EOF, Error: read(remote) failed: EOF

[Marc Roos]

In the manual page this command is used for converting a mailbox

doveadm sync -u test mdbox:~/mdbox -x INBOX -x INBOX/*

Yet I am getting this error and the mdbox folder is not created.

dsync-local(test): (version not received)
doveadm(test): Fatal: execvp(mdbox:~/mdbox) failed: No such file or 
directory

[@ dovecot]# doveconf  | grep mail_locat
mail_location = 
mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u:CONTROL=~/mail/control:INDEX=/var/d
ovecot/%u/index:LAYOUT=maildir++

Users are not having shell access so something like su test -c '' will 
also not work. 

What would be a work-around for this?