Dovecot config file format

Question

I need all dovecot config keywords and default values. There is a dovecot-example.conf on dovecot official site.

OS: CentOS Linux release 7.3.1611 (Core) Dovecot: 2.2.10

But, It has some errors, e.g. in the exmaple config:

# If you want to specify ports for each service, you will need to configure
# these settings inside the protocol imap/pop3 { ... } section, so you can
# specify different ports for IMAP/POP3. For example:
#   protocol imap {
#     listen = *:10143
#     ssl_listen = *:10943
#     ..
#   }
#   protocol pop3 {
#     listen = *:10100
#     ..
#   }

This returns errors when run doveconf -n

doveconf: Warning: NOTE: You can get a new clean config file with: doveconf -n > dovecot-new.conf
doveconf: Warning: Obsolete setting in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf:57: listen=..:port has been replaced by service { inet_listener { port } }
doveconf: Warning: Obsolete setting in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf:57: protocol { listen } has been replaced by service { inet_listener { address } }
doveconf: Warning: Obsolete setting in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf:58: ssl_listen=..:port has been replaced by service { inet_listener { port } }
doveconf: Warning: Obsolete setting in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf:58: protocol { ssl_listen } has been replaced by service { inet_listener { address } }

Another thing is that example config has following sections and define all imap related settings in that.

protocol imap {
...
}

However, on Centos 7, there is a 20-imap.conf file and all imap related settings are defined globally not within protocol imap section.

Which one is better? To place all imap settings in protocol imap section or globally like in centos default config.

Answer 1

doveconf -a > fullconfig.txt will produce exactly what you need. The only exception is the directives like local that have no default values and thus will not be mentioned.

In opposite, doveconf -n > deltas.txt will produce the list of options their values are differ from defaults.