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DOVEAD-INDEXER

Section: Dovecot (1)
Updated: February 2026
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NAME

dovead-indexer- Commands related to managing the indexer process

SYNOPSIS

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] indexer command [lB]OPTIONS[rB] [lB]ARGUMENTS[rB]

DESCRIPTION

doveadm indexer can be used to manage the indexer process.

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.

-f formatter

Specifies the formatter for formatting the output. Supported formatters are: flow

: prints each line with key=value pairs.

json

: prints a JSON array of JSON objects.

pager

: prints each key: value pair on its own line and separates records with form feed character (^L).

tab

: prints a table header followed by tab separated value lines.

table

: prints a table header followed by adjusted value lines.

COMMANDS

indexer add

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] indexer add [lB]-h[rB] [lB]-n max_recent[rB] user mailbox Add indexing request for the given user and the mailbox to the indexer queue. It works the same as the doveadm index-q command. -h

: Add the indexing request to the head of the queue. By default the request is added to the tail of the queue.

-n max_recent

: An integer value, which specifies the maximum number of [rs]Recent messages in mailboxes. If the mailbox contains more than max_recent messages with [rs]Recent flag set, the mailbox will not be indexed. This may be useful to avoid unnecessary indexing for large mailboxes that are never opened.

indexer remove

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] indexer remove user_mask [lB]mailbox_mask[rB] Remove all indexer requests for the matching user_mask (and mailbox_mask). It's possible to use wildcards. Requests that are currently processed by indexe-worker are not listed; use doveadm kick instead to kick them.

indexer list

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] indexer list user_mask List all the queued indexing requests matching user_mask. It's possible to use wildcards. Requests that are currently processed by indexe-worker are not listed; use doveadm who instead to see them.

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

REPORTING BUGS

SEE ALSO