dovecot(1) a secure and highly configurable IMAP and POP3 server

SYNOPSIS

dovecot [-Fp] [-c config-file]
dovecot -a [-c config-file]
dovecot -n [-c config-file]
dovecot --build-options
dovecot --help
dovecot --hostdomain
dovecot --version
dovecot reload
dovecot stop

DESCRIPTION

Dovecot is an open source IMAP and POP3 server for Linux/UNIX-like systems, written with security primarily in mind. Dovecot is an excellent choice for both small and large installations. It's fast, simple to set up, requires no special administration and it uses very little memory.

OPTIONS

-a
Dump all configuration settings to stdout and exit successfully. The same as doveconf -a.
-c config-file
Start dovecot with an alternative configuration.
-F
Run dovecot in foreground, do not daemonize.
-n
Dump non-default settings to stdout and exit successfully. The same as doveconf -n.
-p
Prompt for the ssl key password for the configured ssl_key on startup.
--build-options
Show Dovecot's build options and exit successfully.
--help
Print a usage message to stdout and exit successfully.
--hostdomain
Shows the current host.domain name of the system. If the domain lookup should fail for some reason, only the hostname will be shown.
--version
Show Dovecot's version and exit successfully.

COMMANDS

reload
Force dovecot to reload its configuration.
stop
Shutdown dovecot and all its child processes.

When shutdown_clients is set to no, existing sessions will continue to use the old settings, after a dovecot reload. Also all sessions will keep alive after a dovecot stop.
By default all active sessions will be shut down.

SIGNALS

Dovecot handles the following signals as described:
HUP
Force dovecot to reload its configuration.
INT
Shutdown dovecot and all its child processes.
TERM
Shutdown dovecot and all its child processes.
USR1
Force dovecot to reopen all configured log files (log_path, info_log_path and debug_log_path).

The signals ALARM and PIPE are ignored.

FILES

/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
Dovecot's main configuration file.
/etc/dovecot/dovecot-ldap.conf.ext
Dovecot's LDAP authdb/userdb module configuration file.
/etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf.ext
Dovecot's SQL authdb/userdb module configuration file.
/etc/dovecot/dovecot-dict-sql.conf.ext
Dovecot's dict configuration with SQL-backend.
/etc/dovecot/conf.d/auth-*-conf.ext
Configuration files of different authentication modules.
/etc/dovecot/conf.d/*.conf
Configuration files of different services and settings.

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List <[email protected]>. Information about reporting bugs is available at: http://dovecot.org/bugreport.html

AUTHOR

Dovecot <http://dovecot.org> and its manual pages were written by the Dovecot authors <http://dovecot.org/doc/AUTHORS>, mainly Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi>, and are licensed under the terms of the MIT and LGPLv2.1 licenses, see <http://dovecot.org/doc/COPYING> for details.