Dovecot 2.4 mail_location Has Changed — How to Migrate

The mail_location setting has been split in Dovecot 2.4 — here's the new syntax.

One of the biggest breaking changes in Dovecot 2.4: the mail_location setting no longer works the old way. It's been split into separate settings for mail format and path. Here's how to update your configuration.

In Dovecot 2.3, you had a single mail_location setting like:

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

In Dovecot 2.4, this has been split. You now need to configure the mail driver and path separately within mail { } blocks. The exact syntax depends on whether you use Maildir or mbox format, and whether you're using virtual users with SQL.

This is one of the changes that trips up most administrators during the upgrade — the old setting is silently ignored, and mail delivery fails without useful error messages.

Willem's complete guide walks through every configuration change step by step, including SQL passdb/userdb migration and Sieve plugin updates.