Testing installation

Check that it’s running

First check with ps that the dovecot process is actually running. If it’s not, you had an error in dovecot.conf and the error message was written to log. Go back to Running Dovecot and Dovecot Logging if you can’t find it.

Check that it’s listening

Next check that Dovecot is listening for connections:

# telnet localhost 143
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN] Dovecot ready.

If you got “connection refused”, make sure that Dovecot is configured to serve the imap protocol and listening on the expected interfaces/addresses. The simplest way to do that would be using doveconf:

# doveconf protocols listen
protocols = imap pop3 lmtp sieve
listen = *, ::

If the protocols setting doesn’t contain imap then add it. Also make sure, that relevant !include or !include_try configuration lines are not commented.

If the telnet fails and dovecot emits a log “auth: Fatal: Support not compiled in for passdb driver ‘pam’”, then rebuild dovecot with the pam development headers package installed. In that case you have to re-run the configure script, possibly including option –with-pam to the configure command line.

Next check that it also works from remote host:

# telnet imap.example.com 143
Trying 1.2.3.4...
Connected to imap.example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN] Dovecot ready.

If that didn’t work, check all possible firewalls in between, and check that listen setting is * in dovecot.conf.

If you have only imaps enabled, see remote login section below for how to test using openssl s_client.

Check that it’s allowing logins

# telnet localhost 143
a login "username" "password"

Replace the username and password with the ones you added to passwd.dovecot in Basic Configuration. Note that all IMAP commands begin with a tag, which is basically any string you want, but it must be there. So don’t leave out the “a” in the above example. If the password contains " character, escape it with \\ (e.g. "foo\"bar").

You should get an “a OK Logged in.” reply. If you get “Authentication failed” error, set auth_verbose = yes and log_debug = category=auth in dovecot.conf, restart Dovecot and try again. The log file should now show enough information to help you fix the problem.

Check that it’s allowing remote logins

You’ll need to try this from another computer, since all local IPs are treated as secure:

# telnet imap.example.com 143
a login "username" "password"

If the connection is hanging instead of giving * Dovecot ready, you have a firewall that’s preventing the connections.

Otherwise, the only difference here compared to step above is that you might get:

* BAD [ALERT] Plaintext authentication is disabled, but your client sent password in plaintext anyway. If anyone was listening, the password was exposed.
a NO Plaintext authentication disabled.

If this is the case, you didn’t set disable_plaintext_auth=no. You could alternatively use OpenSSL to test that the server works with SSL:

  • Test using imaps port (assuming you haven’t disabled imaps port):

    # openssl s_client -connect imap.example.com:993
* OK Dovecot ready.

  • Test using imap port and STARTTLS command (works also with imap port):

    # openssl s_client -connect imap.example.com:143 -starttls imap
* OK Dovecot ready.

Check that it finds INBOX

After logging in, check that the INBOX is found:

b select inbox
* FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)] Flags permitted.
* 1 EXISTS
* 1 RECENT
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1106186941] UIDs valid
* OK [UIDNEXT 2] Predicted next UID
b OK [READ-WRITE] Select completed.

It should contain the mail that you sent to yourself in Finding Your Mail step.

If anything goes wrong, set log_debug = category=mail and try again. The log file should now contain debugging information of where Dovecot is trying to find the mails. Fix mail_location setting and try again.

Check that it finds other mailboxes

If you already have other mailboxes created, you can check that Dovecot finds them:

c list "" *
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "test"
* LIST (\NoInferiors) "/" "INBOX"
c OK List completed.

If they weren’t found, set log_debug = category=mail and look at the debugging information. Fix mail_location setting and try again.

Check out some other IMAP commands

If you already have some emails, you can try reading them:

1 SELECT INBOX
2 FETCH 1:* (FLAGS INTERNALDATE BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (SUBJECT)])
3 FETCH 1 BODY[TEXT]

1:* means all messages

You can also try moving a mail to Trash:

4 CREATE Trash
5 COPY 1 Trash
6 STORE 1 +FLAGS \Deleted
7 EXPUNGE

Check that real mail clients work

Since mail clients can be configured in various ways, please check first if the problem is with Dovecot configuration or with the client’s configuration. You can rule out it being Dovecot’s problem with the “telnet” methods described above.

If you can’t log in,

  • Make sure SSL/TLS settings are correct.

  • Make sure the client uses plaintext authentication method, unless you’ve specifically configured Dovecot to accept others.

If you can see only INBOX,

  • Clear out any “IMAP namespace prefix” or similar settings from clients.

  • Check if client is configured to show only “subscribed mailboxes”. If so, you’ll have to subscribe to the mailboxes you wish to see. You can see a list of subscribed mailboxes with:

    d lsub "" *
* LSUB () "/" "INBOX"
d OK Lsub completed.

Most IMAP clients have been tested with Dovecot and they work.

Make a graceful exit

To close the connection to Dovecot issue a logout:

e logout
* BYE Logging out
e OK Logout completed.

See also

Debugging