Change Dovecot mail directory

dovecotimap

I've set up a mail server with Dovecot over SSL. It is receiving emails and placing them in the directory:

/home/*user*/Maildir/new

I can view them in Vim.

However, when I connect to the email via IMAP or Telnet, it does not retrieve anything. Is there somewhere I need to change a directory? Or does anyone have any ideas as to where to look for clue or potential issues. The mail logs are empty.

UPDATE

I found in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf:

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

But /var/mail/user is empty; my mail is is /home/user/Maildir/new

Crossed wires somewhere.

Best Answer

This will depend on how your mail server is setup. I had to change the following file: /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf, change the variable to:

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

Because my mail is being saved there. It appears there are three different ways to save mail, see: http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailLocation

Read to docs, find where you mail is being saved and change the configuration in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf accordingly.

If you cannot find your mail in any of these locations, you probably have another error.

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Dovecot – Fix Mail Not Fetching from /var/spool/mail/$user to mail_location

Andrzej's comment above is right on; dovecot isn't supposed to automagically do that. You will either need to tell sendmail to put the mail where dovecot is expecting it (or at least tell its local delivery agent to do that), or tell dovecot to expect it where sendmail puts it.

In my case, I do the latter; my dovecot.conf includes the line

mail_location = mbox:~/:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u

Edit: your sendmail is configured much as mine, using procmail as the local MDA. The man page for procmail suggests that /var/spool/mail/$user is the default place that procmail wil put incoming mail, if no other is provided:

   /var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME
                          system mailbox; both the system mailbox and the immediate directory it is in will be created  every
                          time procmail starts and either one is not present

so I repeat my point: you can either configure sendmail's MDA, procmail, to put incoming mail in /home/$user/mail/.INBOX, or you can configure dovecot to look in /var/spool/mail/$user. But you will have to do one of these things, it's not going to happen by magic.

Dovecot configuration error (Permission denied) – Email for root

Delivery of email for root (MTA alias)

Standard security recommendation states that email to root should be redirected to non privileged user -> In postfix configuration create alias for root.

http://www.postfix.org/aliases.5.html

BTW AFAIR some file system (NFS?) map user root to user nobody.

Best Answer

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Dovecot – Fix Mail Not Fetching from /var/spool/mail/$user to mail_location

Dovecot configuration error (Permission denied) – Email for root

Delivery of email for root (MTA alias)

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