Simple Virtual User Installation
Virtual users configured in /etc/dovecot/passwd file
- Assuming an unmodified Dovecot v1.x installation
Assuming you're not using NFS. See NFS for problems related to it.
Contents
System configuration
Create dovecot user and dovecot group if they don't exist yet. This is an unprivileged user for Dovecot's internal use. It doesn't need a home directory or a shell.
Create vmail user and vmail group. This is the user/group that's used to access the mails.
Create /home/vmail directory owned by vmail:vmail. The mails for all users are stored under this directory.
Create /var/log/dovecot.log and /var/log/dovecot-info.log files owned by vmail:vmail, so that deliver can write to them.
dovecot.conf
Below is a fully working dovecot.conf file. You can use it directly, but it might be better to instead use dovecot-example.conf as the base and make the same modifications to it.
If you want to configure SSL, see SSL.
# Remove pop3 things if you don't want them
protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s
# It's nice to have separate log files for Dovecot. You could do this
# by changing syslog configuration also, but this is easier.
log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot-info.log
# Disable SSL for now.
ssl = no # v1.2+, for older versions use: ssl_disable = yes
disable_plaintext_auth = no
# We're using Maildir format
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
# If you're using POP3, you'll need this:
pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv
# Authentication configuration:
auth_verbose = yes
auth default {
mechanisms = plain
passdb passwd-file {
args = /etc/dovecot/passwd
}
userdb static {
args = uid=vmail gid=vmail home=/home/vmail/%u
}
}
/etc/dovecot/passwd
See AuthDatabase/PasswdFile for the full file format. Here we're interested only having usernames and passwords in it. Below's an example file:
test:{PLAIN}pass
bill:{PLAIN}secret
timo@example.com:{PLAIN}hello123
dave@example.com:{PLAIN}world234
joe@elsewhere.org:{PLAIN}whee
jane@elsewhere.org:{PLAIN}mypassAs you can see, you can use multiple domains in the file, or no domains at all. Dovecot doesn't care about domains.
Users can be added by editing this file. Dovecot automatically notices the new users immediately after they're added. It also creates their home directories when the user logs in.
Passwords
The passwords in the example passwd file are listed using plaintext scheme. It's possible to use other password schemes as well. For example SSHA would be a pretty strong scheme. You can create them using dovecotpw utility, for example:
dovecotpw -s ssha
Enter new password: foo
Retype new password: foo
{SSHA}DNODS3ZrOq1bu2MasNk79LxHhlU9iI03Note that you won't get the same output after {SSHA} as above, because Dovecot uses random salts when creating the SSHA hash. This means that even if multiple users have the same password, you won't know that because their hashes are different.
The passwd file entry would be:
joe:{SSHA}DNODS3ZrOq1bu2MasNk79LxHhlU9iI03Joe would now have "foo" as his password.
SMTP server configuration
Delivering mails
You can configure the SMTP server to deliver mails internally, or you can use Dovecot's deliver. Using deliver gives you better performance because it updates Dovecot's index files while saving the mails. See LDA for how to configure this. In config you should have:
protocol lda {
postmaster_address = postmaster@example.com
}
SMTP AUTH
If you're using Postfix v2.3+ or Exim v4.64+ you can use Dovecot SASL instead of Cyrus SASL.
Quota
If you need to have quota, add this to dovecot.conf (v1.1+ configuration):
protocol imap {
mail_plugins = quota imap_quota
}
protocol pop3 {
mail_plugins = quota
}
protocol lda {
# .. other required lda settings ..
mail_plugins = quota
}
plugin {
quota = maildir
}Then configure quota by adding userdb_quota_rule extra field to /etc/dovecot/passwd, for example:
joe:{PLAIN}pass::::::userdb_quota_rule=*:storage=100M
jane:{PLAIN}pass::::::userdb_quota_rule=*:storage=200MJoe has now 100MB quota and Jane has 200MB quota. See Quota for more information about quota settings.