How To Install Dovecot on Ubuntu 18.04 & 16.04 LTS

This tutorial will help you to install Dovecot on Ubuntu systems. Dovecot package provides service for POP/IMAP protocols. With these protocols, you can access emails accounts from remote clients.

Step 1 – Install Dovecot on Ubuntu

Dovecot packages are available under default Ubuntu repositories. You can install Dovecot on Ubuntu by running a single command. Open a terminal and execute below command:

sudo apt install dovecot

Step 2 – Configure Dovecot

Dovecot is a service used for providing POP/POP3s and IMAP/IMAPs protocols. POP/IMAP protocols are used for fetching emails from email accounts.

Edit dovecot configuration file and search for below lines and update as below.

# vim /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

protocols = imap
listen = *, ::
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

After doing changes just restart dovecot services to reload the configuration changes.

service dovecot restart

Step 3 – Verify Dovecot Setup

Test your dovecot setup by fetching emails from your email accounts using IMAP protocol. mutt is a utility to use for fetch emails.

mutt -f imap://username:password@localhost