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DOVEAD-USER

Section: Dovecot (1)
Updated: February 2026
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NAME

dovead-user- Perform a user lookup in Dovecot's userdbs

SYNOPSIS

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] user [lB]-a userdb_socket_path[rB] [lB]-f field[rB] [lB]-u[rB] [lB]-x auth_info[rB] user...

DESCRIPTION

The user command is used to perform a user lookup- to show what information Dovecot sees about the user (s), or if it exists at all in the configured userdb (s). The auth_info may be useful when the userdb is for example a SQL database and you are using %variables, like %{protocol} or %{local_ip}, in the userdb_sql_query setting. Or when you have configured the userdb in a way like this:

userdb passw-file {
  passwd_file_path = /etc/%{protocol}.passwd
}

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 userdb_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 field

: When this option and the name of a userdb field is given, doveadm(1) will show only the value of the specified field.

-u

: When this option is given, doveadm(1) will only show values from the

-x auth_info

auth_info specifies additional conditions for the user command. The auth_info option string has to be given as name = value pair. For multiple conditions the -x option could be supplied multiple times. Possible names for the auth_info are: service

: The service for which the userdb lookup should be tested. The value may be the name of a service, commonly used with Dovecot. For example: imap, pop3 or smtp.

session

: Session identifier.

lip

: The local IP address (server) for the test.

rip

: The remote IP address (client) for the test.

lport

: The local port, e.g. 143

rport

: The remote port, e.g. 24567

real_lip

: The local IP to which the client connected on this host.

real_rip

: The remote IP where client connected from to this host.

real_lport

: The local port to which client connected to to this host.

real_rport

: The remote port from where the client connected from to this host.

forward_<field>

: Field to forward as %{forward:field} to auth process.

ARGUMENTS

user

: Is a user's login name. 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 [rs]*@example.org).

EXAMPLE

Perform a user lookup for the users jane and john@example.com:

doveadm user jane john@example.com

userdb: jane
  uid       : 8001
  gid       : 8001
  home      : /home/jane
  mail_path : ~/sdbox
  plugins   : sieve
  quota_storage_size: 150M

userdb: john@example.com
  home      : /srv/mail/8/70312/79832
  uid       : 79832
  gid       : 70312
  mail_path : ~/mdbox

User lookup, using wildcards:

doveadm user [rs]*.?oe@example.net

jane.doe@example.net
judy.roe@example.net
john.doe@example.net

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