Dovecot is an open-source IMAP, IMAP-SSL and POP3 server. You don’t need to use Dovecut you could use Courier Imap instead but Dovecut does a pretty good job and has gained more and more popularity over the years. Dovecot has a tremendous amount of options and possibilities and there is simply not enough time to cover all of this. So this will just be a quick guide in order to get you up running with Dovecot. Once it runs you can then expand on your knowledge of Dovecot by yourself.
cd /usr/ports/mail/dovecot make WITH="VPOPMAIL" install clean
When the option screen pops up just hit “Ok”.
Running Dovecot with Daemontools
cd /usr/local/etc mv dovecot.conf dovecot.orig fetch http://www.xfiles.dk/content/files/freebsd-qmail/dovecot.conf mkdir /var/qmail/supervise/dovecot/log cd /var/qmail/supervise/dovecot/log fetch http://www.xfiles.dk/content/files/freebsd-qmail/dovecot-log-run mv dovecot-log-run run chmod 0755 run
cd /var/qmail/supervise/dovecot/ fetch http://www.xfiles.dk/content/files/freebsd-qmail/dovecot-run mv dovecot-run run chmod 0755 run
Enable dovecot to run with daemontools.
ln -s /var/qmail/supervise/dovecot /service/
And let’s check if things are running as intended.
svstat /service/dovecot /service/dovecot/log
You should get an output very similar to the one below.
/service/dovecot: up (pid 686) 27 seconds /service/dovecot/log: up (pid 695) 27 seconds
Add Dovecot to qmailctl
In order to control dovecut from qmailctl we need to edit this file /usr/bin/qmailctl find the following lines and remove the # mark.
# if svok /service/dovecot ; then # svc -u /service/dovecot /service/dovecot/log # echo "Starting dovecot" # else # echo "dovecot supervise not running" # fi # echo " dovecot" # svc -d /service/dovecot /service/dovecot/log # svstat /service/dovecot # svstat /service/dovecot/log # echo "Pausing dovecot" # svc -p /service/dovecot # echo "Pausing dovecot" # svc -c /service/dovecot # echo "* Restarting dovecot" # svc -t /service/dovecot /service/dovecot/log
All of the lines above should now look like this.
if svok /service/dovecot ; then svc -u /service/dovecot /service/dovecot/log echo "Starting dovecot" else echo "dovecot supervise not running" fi echo " dovecot" svc -d /service/dovecot /service/dovecot/log svstat /service/dovecot svstat /service/dovecot/log echo "Pausing dovecot" svc -p /service/dovecot echo "Pausing dovecot" svc -c /service/dovecot echo "* Restarting dovecot" svc -t /service/dovecot /service/dovecot/log
Enabling SSL
In order to add ssl functionality to Dovecot you need 2 things.
1: Having qmail with SSL configured.
2: Enable SSL in the dovecot configuration file.
To Enable SSL in Dovecot edit this file /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf If you enable SSL in Dovecot but your Qmail installation does not have SSL running then Dovecot will stop working. Dovecot does not have a “fallback” option if SSL should not be available. Right so in /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf find this line.
ssl = no
And you guessed it. Change it to.
ssl = yes
Now restart Dovecot and check if it is running as intended.
svc -t /service/dovecot /service/dovecot/log qmailctl stat
And we are done here.