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DOVEAD-EXEC

Section: Dovecot (1)
Updated: February 2026
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NAME

dovead-exec- Easily execute commands from Dovecot's libexec directory.

SYNOPSIS

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] exec binary [lB]binary arguments[rB]

DESCRIPTION

This command allows administrators and local users to simply execute commands from within /usr/libexec/dovecot. So for example a logged in system user could start a pr-authenticated imap session, using the command: doveadm exec imap. An administrator would use the command doveadm exec imap-u username.

GLOBAL OPTIONS

Global doveadm(1) -D

: Enables verbosity and debug messages.

-O

: Do not read any config file, just use defaults. The dovecot_storage_version setting defaults to the latest version, but can be overridden with

-k

: Preserve entire environment for doveadm, not just import_environment setting.

-v

: Enables verbosity, including progress counter.

-i instanc-name

: If using multiple Dovecot instances, choose the config file based on this instance name. See instance_name setting for more information.

-c confi-file

: Read configuration from the given confi-file. By default it first reads config socket, and then falls back to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. You can also point this to config socket of some instance running compatible version.

-o setting=value

: Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf and from the userdb with the given value. In order to override multiple settings, the -o option may be specified multiple times.

ARGUMENTS

binary

: the name of an executable located in /usr/libexec/dovecot.

binary arguments

: options and arguments, which will be passed through to the binary.

EXAMPLE

This example demonstrates how to deliver a message from a file to a user's mailbox.

doveadm exec doveco-lda-d user@example.net-f admin@example.net < ~/stuff/welcome.msg

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs, including doveconf-n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List ladovecot@dovecot.orgra. Information about reporting bugs is available at: https://dovecot.org/bugreport.html SEE ALSO doveadm(1)