DOVEAD-PW

Section: Dovecot (1)
Updated: February 2026
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NAME

dovead-pw- Dovecot's password hash generator and validator  

SYNOPSIS

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] pw-l doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] pw [lB]-p password[rB] [lB]-r rounds[rB] [lB]-s scheme[rB] [lB]-u user[rB] [lB]-V[rB] doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] pw -t hash [lB]-p password[rB] [lB]-u user[rB]  

DESCRIPTION

doveadm pw is used to generate password hashes for different password scheme s and optionally verify the generated hash. All generated password hashes have a {scheme} prefix, for example {SHA51-CRYPT.HEX}. All passdbs have a default scheme for passwords stored without the {scheme} prefix. The default scheme can be overridden by storing the password with the scheme prefix. If you want to use this feature to verify or generate passwords without configuring Dovecot first, you can use doveadm-O pw to do so.  

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

-l

List all supported password scheme s and exit successfully. There are up to three optional password schemes: BL-CRYPT (Blowfish crypt), SHA25-CRYPT and SHA51-CRYPT. Their availability depends on the system's currently used libc.

-p password

 was given doveadm(1) will prompt interactively for one. (Beware that using this option means the plain text password will be in your shell history!)

-r rounds

The password scheme s BL-CRYPT, SHA25-CRYPT and SHA51-CRYPT supports a variable number of encryption rounds. The following table shows the minimum/maximum number of encryption rounds per scheme. When the -r option was omitted the default number of encryption rounds will be applied. | Scheme | Minimum | Maximum | Default | |- |- |- |- | | BL-CRYPT | 4 | 31 | 5 | | SHA25-CRYPT | 1000 | 999999999 | 5000 | | SHA51-CRYPT | 1000 | 999999999 | 5000 |

-s scheme

The password scheme which should be used to generate the hashed password. By default the CRYPT scheme will be used (with the $2y$ bcrypt format). It is also possible to append an encoding suffix to the scheme. Supported encoding suffixes are: .b64, .base64 and .hex. See also password_schemes for more details about password schemes.

-t hash

 option. When no password was specified, doveadm(1) will prompt interactively for one.

-u user

 name must also be given, because the user name is a part of the generated hash. For more information about Diges-MD5 please read also auth_digest_md5. For other schemes, this is not required.

-V

When this option is given, the hashed password will be internally verified. The result of the verification will be shown after the hashed password, enclosed in parenthesis.

 

EXAMPLE

An ARGON2ID hash (best security at time of this writing, though can be heavy on a busy server):

# doveadm pw-s ARGON2ID
Enter new password:
Retype new password:
{ARGON2ID}$argon2id$v=19$m=65536,t=3,p=1$AOrrkaFmGxCFtX+NCSHFkg$N3rlzYFqyNkCwrOingnDJ/qDQ09yGHgQa8PQfbu7rIE

Alternatively, a SHA51-CRYPT hash:

# doveadm pw-s SHA51-CRYPT
Enter new password:
Retype new password:
{SHA51-CRYPT}$6$qAvxfQ2UbA1QTXSg$SB2aMEK76DBObt.KqTjF5.yDMceaD3dkG2UvrKQD0rZ9PKii/VAn.VS0nBsDqJX18kXieMi8AWJr0f7Ae9dAp/

 

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

EXAMPLE

REPORTING BUGS

SEE ALSO