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Asked: 2012-03-02 09:25:08 +0800 CST

Dovecot with Postfix on Ubuntu: warning: SASL: Connect to private/auth-client failed: No such file or directory

  • 772

I can't seem to get dovecot to start. My log keeps showing this stuff:

connect from localhost[127.0.0.1]
Mar  1 17:15:01 mac postfix/smtpd[32526]: warning: SASL: Connect to private/auth-client failed: No such file or directory
Mar  1 17:15:01 mac postfix/smtpd[32526]: fatal: no SASL authentication mechanisms
Mar  1 17:15:02 mac postfix/master[21369]: warning: process /usr/lib/postfix/smtpd pid 32526 exit status 1
Mar  1 17:15:02 mac postfix/master[21369]: warning: /usr/lib/postfix/smtpd: bad command startup -- throttling
Mar  1 17:15:03 mac postfix/smtpd[32546]: connect from localhost[127.0.0.1]
Mar  1 17:15:03 mac postfix/smtpd[32546]: warning: SASL: Connect to private/auth-client failed: No such file or directory
Mar  1 17:15:03 mac postfix/smtpd[32546]: fatal: no SASL authentication mechanisms
Mar  1 17:15:04 mac postfix/master[21369]: warning: process /usr/lib/postfix/smtpd pid 32546 exit status 1
Mar  1 17:15:04 mac postfix/master[21369]: warning: /usr/lib/postfix/smtpd: bad command startup -- throttling

My /etc/postfix/main.cf has:

home_mailbox = Maildir/
mailbox_command =
inet_protocols = ipv4
smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth-client
smtpd_sasl_local_domain =
smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous

And googling makes it look like I need to add a client block like:

client {
  path = /var/spool/postfix/auth/dovecot
  mode = 0660
  user = postfix
  group = mail
}

But it seems that dovecot has been changed since all the examples I find, so I'm not sure where to put that. I'm using Dovecot 2.0.13

Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks!

linux ubuntu postfix email-server dovecot

3 Answers

  1. I looked all over for this and didn't find anything. I'm using Dovecot 2.0.19.

    Eventually found the fix by editing /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf and setting up the following:

      # Postfix smtp-auth
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth_client {
    mode = 0666
    user = postfix
  }

    Then restart dovecot ('service restart dovecot')

    If you don't have the file /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf, try grepping /etc/dovecot to find where it might be being configured:

    cd /etc/dovecot
grep -ri postfix *

    and look for a file that declares a path to somewhere in /var/spool/postfix, and adjust as needed. In my dovecot configuration, the unix_listener was commented out and was pointing to the wrong file (/var/spool/postfix/private/auth).

    • 2

  2. Of course you need to have the pathname of the socket match in Dovecot and Postfix, otherwise you are going to got No such file or directory errors for the obvious reason that you're connecting to a socket that does not exist.

    Choose one pathname or the other and configure it the same way in Dovecot and Postfix. For example, make your Dovecot config match what Postfix is expecting:

    auth default {
  ...
  socket listen {
    ...
    client {
      path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth-client
      mode = 0660
      user = postfix
      group = mail
    }
    ...
  }
  ...
}
    • 1

  3. you have to change auth-client for dovecot-auth because is the name of the new socket auth. locate in /var/spool/postfix/private/. So put /var/spool/postfix/private/dovecot-auth instead of /var/spool/postfix/private/auth-client.

    I got the same problem and was resolve with this.

    • 0