DOVEAD-KICK

Section: Dovecot (1)
Updated: February 2026
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NAME

dovead-kick- Disconnect users by user name and/or IP address  

SYNOPSIS

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] kick [lB]-a anvil_socket_path[rB] [lB]-f passdb_field[rB] [lB]-h dest_host[rB] user_mask doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] kick [lB]-a anvil_socket_path[rB] [lB]-f passdb_field[rB] [lB]-h dest_host[rB] ip [lB]/ bits[rB] doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] kick [lB]-a anvil_socket_path[rB] [lB]-f passdb_field[rB] [lB]-h dest_host[rB] user_mask ip [lB]/ bits[rB] doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] kick [lB]-a anvil_socket_path[rB] [lB]-f passdb_field[rB] -h dest_host  

DESCRIPTION

doveadm's kick command is used to disconnect users by user_mask and/or the ip address, from which they are connected. In the first form, all users, whose login name matches the user_mask argument, will be disconnected. In the second form, all users, connected from the given IP address or network range, will be disconnected. In the third form, only users connected from the given IP address or networks range and a matching login name will be disconnected. In the last form, all proxy connections to the given destination host are disconnected.  

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.

 

OPTIONS

-a anvil_socket_path

This option is used to specify an absolute path to an alternative UNIX domain socket. By default doveadm(1) will use the socket

-f passdb_field

Alternative username field to use for kicking, as returned by passdb. Only the passdb fields beginning with the user_ prefix are tracked.

-h dest_host

Disconnect proxy connections to the given dest_host.

 

ARGUMENTS

ip [lB]/bits[rB]

ip or ip / bits is the host or network, from which the users are connected.

user_mask

Is a user's login name, or the alternative username (user_* field) if the -f parameter is used. Depending on the configuration, a login name may be for example jane or john@example.com. It's also possible to use '*' and '?' wildcards (e.g.-u *@example.org).

 

EXAMPLE

If you don't want to disconnect all users at once, you can check who's currently logged in. The first example demonstrates how to disconnect all users whose login name is 3 characters long and begins with ba:

doveadm who-1 ja[rs]*

username                      service pid ip
jane                          imap   8192 ::1
jano                          imap   8196 ::2
james                         imap   8203 2001:db8:543:2::1

doveadm kick jan?
# The connections for jane and jano are kicked.

The next example shows how to kick user foo's connections from 192.0.2.*:

doveadm who-1 foo

username                     service pid ip
foo                          imap   8135 fd95:4eed:38ba::25
foo                          imap   9112 192.0.2.53
foo                          imap   8216 192.0.2.111

doveadm kick foo 192.0.2.0/24
doveadm who f[rs]*

username                  # service (pids) (ips)
foo                       1 imap    (8135) (fd95:4eed:38ba::25)

 

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)

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Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

GLOBAL OPTIONS

OPTIONS

ARGUMENTS

EXAMPLE

REPORTING BUGS

SEE ALSO