Mailcow-Dockerized on macOS - dovecot restartloop

lainvoo

Hello!

I’ve installed mailcow following this guide: https://medium.com/codex/using-mailcow-as-a-mail-server-edfabb050e8

For some reason dovecot is not able to run. It gives the following error:
Uptime: 417 Threads: 12 Questions: 862 Slow queries: 0 Opens: 56 Open tables: 47 Queries per second avg: 2.067 2023-09-04 16:01:25 sed: couldn't open temporary file /etc/dovecot/lua/sedO2X7mW: Permission denied
The error message comes once every minute. Every time the temp folder name changes.

I’m running Docker Desktop 4.23.0 (120376) (Engine 24.0.6, Compose: v2.21.0-desktop.1, Kubernetes: v1.27.2)(installed via Homebrew) on Intel iMac with macOS Ventura 13.5.2

Hopefully there is a solution to this error.

The main reason I’m trying to get mailcow to run is to fix a migration error I encountered when migrating emails to Microsoft365 and sent emails ended up with wrong “received” date. Therefor I have 4 mailboxes where all sent emails are dated 10th of August 2023. My idea is to copy emails to dovecot and then use the following script to fix the dates. Script: https://gist.github.com/mwodz/ceba436e4590073db61930551cba9ec1

If anyone has a better idea to fix this then it would be really welcome.

Thank you!

esackbauer

Hmm that is a not supported platform, and you should stick to the official installation guide:
https://docs.mailcow.email/prerequisite/prerequisite-system/
You are probably better off installing a Debian VM and inside that docker and mailcow.

And just executing the script, why not only using the dovecot container instead a full blown complex groupware solution?

lainvoo

That was a good idea. I got plain dovecot running in Debian VM. Moved emails with “bad date” by Draging them to dovecot account in Elementary Mail and used the script to fix emails. Then dragged the emails to another email service (google or icloud will suffice) and then used Microsoft Migration tool to migrate them to Exchange. Draging directly to Exchange results “bad date” to sent emails, but migrating via Exchange Migration tool keeps the dates correct.