installing Dovecot on MacOsX using MacPorts

master howto: https://trac.macports.org/wiki/howto/SetupDovecot

Install

sudo port install dovecot
sudo port load dovecot

Configure

sudo cp /opt/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot-example.conf  /opt/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

sudo vim /opt/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

Mine reads (it's just meant to access imap files from the local mail server and not to serve outside the localhost):

protocols = imap
listen = localhost:10143
disable_plaintext_auth = no
ssl = no
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
protocol imap {
}
auth default {
  mechanisms = plain
  passdb pam {
    args = login
  }
  userdb passwd {
      args =
  }
user = root
dict {
}

Reload

sudo launchctl stop org.macports.dovecot
sudo launchctl start org.macports.dovecot

It does not work on the first try... so read documentation

less /opt/local//share/doc/dovecot/documentation.txt
less /opt/local//share/doc/dovecot/auth-protocol.txt
less /opt/local//share/doc/dovecot/wiki/PasswordDatabase.PAM.txt

Authentification

ls -l /etc/pam.d/
sudo vim /etc/pam.d/dovecot

with /etc/pam.d/dovecot being

auth       required       pam_permit.so
account    required       pam_permit.so
password   required       pam_deny.so
session    required       pam_uwtmp.so