Solved Dovecot stops working after generating SSL certificate via DirectAdmin

Webplace4u

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Jul 10, 2025
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When I generate an SSL certificate for a user account through DirectAdmin, Dovecot stops functioning. If I remove the SSL certificate, Dovecot works again. This should work out of the box, right? I shouldn't need to do manual configuration when adding user accounts and generating SSL certificates - users should be able to continue using email normally.
Server Information:

DirectAdmin: 1.679 (Running)
SSH: Running
Apache: 2.4.63 (Running)
Dovecot: 2.4.1 (Stopped)
Exim: 4.98.2 (Running)
Pure-FTPd: 1.0.52 (Running)
MySQL: Running
Named: Running

Error Log:
Jul 10 20:41:17 s24 systemd[1]: Started Dovecot IMAP/POP3 email server.
Jul 10 20:41:17 s24 dovecot[2732]: doveconf: Fatal: Error in configuration file /etc/dovecot/conf/sni/wpfout.nl.conf line 2: ssl_cert: Unknown setting: ssl_cert
Jul 10 20:41:17 s24 systemd[1]: dovecot.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=89/n/a
Jul 10 20:41:17 s24 systemd[1]: dovecot.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

The error indicates that there's an "Unknown setting: ssl_cert" in the SNI configuration file. This issue occurs with multiple domains (wpfout.nl is just an example - other domains have the same problem).

Has anyone encountered this issue before? What's the proper way to resolve this without having to manually configure each SSL certificate? It seems like DirectAdmin should handle this automatically when generating SSL certificates.
 
Hello,

You might try and reinstall/upgrade dovecot:

Bash:
da update --force
da build set dovecot yes
da build set dovecot_conf yes
da build dovecot

for some reasons DirectAdmin tries to use configs for dovecot 2.3.x

and make sure, you've got no /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/custom/dovecot/
 
PROBLEM SOLVED!

Thanks to zEitEr for the solution!
Running these commands fixed it:

Code:
da build set dovecot yes
da build set dovecot_conf yes
da build dovecot

SSL certificates now work perfectly without breaking Dovecot. DirectAdmin handles everything automatically as it should!
Much appreciated zEitEr! 👍
 
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