Man page - doveadm-force-resync(1)

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Manual

DOVEADM-FORCE-RESYNC(1) Dovecot DOVEADM-FORCE-RESYNC(1)

doveadm-force-resync - Repair broken mailboxes

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] force-resync [-S socket_path] -A mailbox

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] force-resync [-S socket_path] -F file mailbox

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] force-resync [-S socket_path] --no-userdb-lookup mailbox

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] force-resync [-S socket_path] -u user mailbox

Under certain circumstances it may happen, that dovecot(1) is unable to automatically solve problems with mailboxes. In such situations the force-resync command may be helpful. It tries to fix all problems. For sdbox and mdbox mailboxes the storage files will be also checked.

Global doveadm(1) options:

-D

Enables verbosity and debug messages.

-O

Do not read any config file, just use defaults. The dovecot_storage_version setting defaults to the latest version, but can be overridden with -o.

-k

Preserve entire environment for doveadm, not just import_environment setting.

-v

Enables verbosity, including progress counter.

-i instance-name

If using multiple Dovecot instances, choose the config file based on this instance name.

See instance_name setting for more information.

-c config-file

Read configuration from the given config-file. By default it first reads config socket, and then falls back to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. You can also point this to config socket of some instance running compatible version.

-o setting=value

Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf and from the userdb with the given value. In order to override multiple settings, the -o option may be specified multiple times.

-A

If the -A option is present, the command will be performed for all users. Using this option in combination with system users from userdb { driver = passwd } is not recommended, because it contains also users with a lower UID than the one configured with the first_valid_uid setting.

When the SQL userdb module is used, make sure that the userdb_sql_iterate_query setting setting matches your database layout.

When using the LDAP userdb module, make sure that the userdb_fields setting and userdb_ldap_iterate_fields setting settings match your LDAP schema. Otherwise doveadm(1) will be unable to iterate over all users.

-F file

Execute the command for all the users in the file. This is similar to the -A option, but instead of getting the list of users from the userdb, they are read from the given file. The file contains one username per line.

--no-userdb-lookup

Do not perform userdb lookup. Use the USER environment variable to specify the username.

-S socket_path

The option's argument is either an absolute path to a local UNIX domain socket, or a hostname and port (hostname:port), in order to connect a remote host via a TCP socket.

This allows an administrator to execute doveadm(1) mail commands through the given socket.

-u user/mask

Run the command only for the given user. It's also possible to use '*' and '?' wildcards (e.g. -u *@example.org).

mailbox

The name of the mailbox to fix. With mdbox all of the mailboxes are fixed, so you can use for example INBOX as the name.

Fix bob's INBOX:

doveadm force-resync -u bob INBOX

Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List ⟨dovecot@dovecot.org⟩. Information about reporting bugs is available at: https://dovecot.org/bugreport.html

doveadm(1)

March 2026 2b97ab9