Re: How do you use doveadm fetch -S

On February 20, 2026 12:21:14 PM GMT+02:00, Steve Litt via dovecot <[email protected]> wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I have a working plain text 127.0.0.1:143 Dovecot 2.4.2 on my Qemu VM
>guest. The following command displays the Receive date, From and
>Subject for every email in my golugTech mailbox, exactly like the docs
>say it should:
>
>===================================================
>doveadm fetch -u slitt   "date.received hdr.from hdr.subject" mailbox
>golugTech
>
>===================================================
>
>But when I add the -S in order to specify the 127.0.0.1 listener at
>port 143, it throws the following error:
>
>===================================================
>
>[slitt@mydesk ~]$ cat junk.jnk
>[root@dovecotvoid dovecot]# doveadm fetch -S 127.0.0.1:143 -u slitt
>"date.received hdr.from hdr.subject" mailbox golugTech
>doveadm(slitt): Error: conn 127.0.0.1:143 (127.0.0.1:143): doveadm
>server sent invalid handshake: * OK Waiting for  authentication process
>to respond.. 
>doveadm(slitt): Error: cmd fetch: 127.0.0.1:143: Command fetch failed
>for slitt: Connection closed 
>[root@dovecotvoid dovecot]# [slitt@mydesk~]$ 
>
>===================================================
>
>The docs say -S is to specify the socket_path, and it should be
>expressed as hostname:port. For hostname, besides 127.0.0.1, I tried
>localhost and dovecotvoid, the latter of which should not work because
>dovecotvoid is not 127.0.0.1, it's 10.0.2.15.
>
>The docs say "This allows an administrator to execute doveadm(1) mail
>commands through the given socket." So I guess finding the server isn't
>the purpose of socket_path.
>
>My plain text 143 Dovecot 2.4.2 IMAP works just fine without the -S. Is
>there ever a case where doveadm fetch would need to know the specific
>address and port of the dovecot IMAP server, and if so, how would I
>specify it?
>
>Thanks,
>
>SteveT
>
>Steve Litt 
>http://444domains.com
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>


This is because -S expects *doveadm* server, not imap server. You can use 

service doveadm {
  inet_listener doveadm {
    port = 12345
  }
}

to specify one. It can also be unix_listener.

Aki

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