System Preparation

We have to create a system user, named doveauth. The doveauth user will execute Dovecot’s authentication processes.

We will also create an additional system group, named dovemail. The GID of the group dovemail will be the supplementary GID for all mail related Dovecot processes, e.g. the dict service for quota limits.

And finally we will create the base_directory, with it’s subdirectories. It is the location for all domain directories and the virtual user’s home directories.

The example below shows the steps executed on a Debian GNU/Linux system.

root@host:~# adduser --system --home /nonexistent --no-create-home --group \
> --disabled-login --gecos "Dovecot IMAP/POP3 authentication user" doveauth
root@host:~# addgroup --system dovemail
root@host:~# mkdir /srv/mail
root@host:~# cd /srv/mail
root@host:/srv/mail# mkdir 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
root@host:/srv/mail# chmod 771 /srv/mail
root@host:/srv/mail# chmod 751 /srv/mail/*