Thanks for the help. I run dovecot directly via a homebrew install. As noted, 2.3 was working fine.
The getent command doesn't work on macOS, but the corresponding one doesn't show the dovecot user in the dovecot group, so clearly I've not set it up correctly. However, if I keep the following two lines from my previous conf file, I don't get that error and can launch dovecot: default_internal_user = _dovecot default_internal_group = mail Starting from the conf file here: https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.0/core/config/guides/quick.html, I've inserted my own username and group as I had for 2.3, not the "vmail" in the model. Now dovecot is running, but I'm still not connecting. I suspect it's now either the password or the location of the mailbox. For the latter, I had in 2.3.0: mail_location = maildir:/Users/%u/Maildir but 2.4.0 seems to use a different format with multiple lines for this and I'm not quite sure how to configure it, though I think I read this in the Docs as the way to go for Maildir: mail_driver = maildir mail_path = ~/Maildir Still no luck. I even put in the explicit path for ~. But I don't think it even gets to that point. Here's what the Mail.app log says when I try to connect: INITIATING CONNECTION Jan 31 16:09:49.358 host:127.0.0.1 -- port:587 -- socket:0x0 -- thread:0x6000038676c0 So no connection made, apparently. For the password, I was using this in 2.3 (or something similar that I may have edited yesterday): passdb { driver = static args = password=<PASSWORD> } Not quite sure how to configure that now, but the conf file suggests using the system authentication, and it may be that I have not set up the dovecot file appropriately in pam.d, but I'm using the macOS suggestion found at https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.0/core/config/auth/databases/pam.html#pam-pam: auth required pam_opendirectory.so try_first_pass account required pam_nologin.so account required pam_opendirectory.so password required pam_opendirectory.so My conf file has this from the default noted above: # Authenticate as system users: passdb pam { } It's my personal computer, so I'm happy to have the password setup be via text, and I've tried a simple password as well, again following the docs: https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.0/core/config/guides/quick.html passdb passwd-file { passwd_file_path = /path/to/passwd } Still not working. Anyway, this is quite long now, so thanks for any suggestions. Jackie > On Jan 31, 2025, at 07:09, Aki Tuomi via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote: > > >> On 30/01/2025 20:05 EET John Muccigrosso via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> >> wrote: >> >> >> I got bitten by the upgrade from 2.3 to 2.4 on my MacOS laptop. I know >> enough to be dangerous here and had a set-up that was working fine, but now >> I can't quite figure out how to modify my conf file to work correctly. >> >> The current error I'm getting is that there is no group "dovecot" even >> though I've created one and made the default user a member: >> >>> Fatal: service(dict) Group doesn't exist: dovecot >> >> More broadly I find the documentation hard to follow, as others seem to have >> noted in the past. >> >> Any help appreciated. >> >> Jackie >> > > Can you show output of > > getent groups dovecot > getent passwd dovecot > > Also, are you running dovecot is some container or directly on your macos? > > Aki > > _______________________________________________ > dovecot mailing list -- dovecot@dovecot.org > To unsubscribe send an email to dovecot-le...@dovecot.org  _______________________________________________ dovecot mailing list -- dovecot@dovecot.org To unsubscribe send an email to dovecot-le...@dovecot.org
