Connect to private/dovecot-auth failed

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About

Connect to private/dovecot-auth failed: No such file or directory is an error message which appears in /var/log/mail.log and is generated by Postfix.

A more complete and generalized version of this message is:

servername nss-mysql[number]: warning: SASL: Connect to pipe failed: No such file or directory

Where:

  • servername is the network name of the machine generating the error
  • number is an integer, significance unknown (it seems to be a standard thing in mail.log files)
  • pipe is the filespec of a pipe for communication between Postfix and Dovecot, typically "private/dovecot-auth"
    • (is "pipe" correct, or do I mean "socket"? not sure.)

In one particular scenario, it is preceded by an SMTP connection attempt from a remote server, and followed by a fatal: no SASL authentication mechanisms error message.

Example

Oct 3 07:42:32 rizzo nss-mysql[26619]: warning: SASL: Connect to private/dovecot-auth failed: No such file or directory
Oct 3 07:42:32 rizzo nss-mysql[26619]: fatal: no SASL authentication mechanisms
Oct 3 07:42:33 rizzo postfix/master[4272]: warning: process /usr/lib/postfix/smtp

In this particular case, a fix involved the following:

  • ls /var/spool/postfix/private
  • look for pipe with "auth" in the name
  • modify Dovecot's dovecot.conf file so that the auth default section includes at least the "client" section shown here, but with the "path" parameter pointing at your actual auth pipe.

If that doesn't work, go to the Postfix and Dovecot web sites and read up on SASL, especially this section.

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