NAME

dovecot - 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 <dovecot@dovecot.org>. 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.