How to Install Dovecot on Cent OS

Hi All,

Today We are going to see how to install Dovecot on Cent OS.

Now install Dovecot using the following command:

    yum -y install dovecot

Once Dovecot is installed, edit the following file using your favorite editor.

    nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf

and find the following lines:

    # Postfix smtp-auth

Now Append the following lines, just below these lines:

    # Postfix smtp-auth
    unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
    mode = 0660
    user = postfix
    group = postfix
    }

Now open another configuration using the following command.

    nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf

and find the following lines.

    # Space separated list of wanted authentication mechanisms:
    #   plain login digest-md5 cram-md5 ntlm rpa apop anonymous gssapi otp skey
    #   gss-spnego
    # NOTE: See also disable_plaintext_auth setting.
    auth_mechanisms = plain

Append login at the end of the line auth_mechanisms = plain to make it look like

    auth_mechanisms = plain login

Again edit /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf file using your favorite editor.

    nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf

Find the following lines

    # 
    #
    #mail_location =

Now add the following line just below these lines:

    mail_location = maildir:~/mail

Now edit /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-pop3.conf using your favorite editor.

    nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-pop3.conf

and find the following lines.

    #pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv

Uncomment the above line to make it look like as shown below.

    # Note that Outlook 2003 seems to have problems with %v.%u format which was
    # Dovecot's default, so if you're building a new server it would be a good
    # idea to change this. %08Xu%08Xv should be pretty fail-safe.
    #
    pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv 

Now restart postfix, and dovecot using the following command.

    systemctl restart postfix
    systemctl enable postfix
    systemctl restart dovecot
    systemctl enable dovecot

Now if you have a firewall running you will need to allow port number 25, 587, 465, 110, 143, 993, 995 and 80. All the ports except 80 are used to send and receive emails and port 80 is used to make HTTP connections. HTTP connections will be used to access Squirrelmail using web interface.

To unblock all these ports from firewall, run the following commands.

    firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=smtp
    firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=587/tcp
    firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=465/tcp
    firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=110/tcp
    firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=pop3s
    firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=143/tcp
    firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=imaps
    firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
    firewall-cmd --reload

Testing Postfix and Dovecot

You can check if Postfix is working by executing the following command in your terminal.

    telnet mail.yourdomain.com smtp

If you do not have telnet installed, then you can run the following command to install telnet.

    yum -y install telnet

Once you are connected using telnet you will see following output.

    Trying ::1...
    Connected to localhost.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    220 mail.rackvoucher.com ESMTP Postfix

Now you can also send email using telnet. Use the following command to enter the sender username.

    mail from:

To enter the email of recipient, you can use the use the following command.

    rcpt to:

To enter the body of email, enter the following command.

    data

Once you have entered your message, enter dot (.) to finish the message. Finally enter quit to exit telnet.

To test Dovecot, enter the following command.

    telnet mail.yourdomain.com pop3

You will see following output,

    Trying 104.36.18.239...
    Connected to mail.rackvoucher.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    +OK Dovecot ready.

It tells that Dovecot is working fine, you can login to your mail account by providing login command, then use pass command to enter your password. To view the mails in your account, use retr command.

    user mailuser
    +OK
    pass Password
    +OK Logged in.
    retr
    -ERR There's no message 1.
    quit
    +OK Logging out.
    Connection closed by foreign host.

 

Thanks for reading this tutorial 🙂