DOVEADM-QUOTA(1)

💖 DOVEADM-QUOTA — the doveadm quota page, but make it make sense 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let me tell you about doveadm-quota(1) — the Dovecot command that initializes, recalculates, or shows your current quota usage. She's giving housekeeping. She's giving "your mailbox is 87% full and you need to know about it". Iconic. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

doveadm-quota — initialize/recalculate or show current quota usage

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] [-f formatter] quota [-S socket_path] command -A

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] [-f formatter] quota [-S socket_path] command -F file

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] [-f formatter] quota [-S socket_path] command --no-userdb-lookup

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] [-f formatter] quota [-S socket_path] command -u user

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So the whole thing is basically "which users are we doing this for?" and there are four answers, one per synopsis form. Let me break it down:

• First form — the command gets performed for all users. Everybody. The whole group chat. 💅
• Second form — the command gets performed for all users listed in the given file.
• Third form — the command gets performed for the user contained in the USER environment variable.
• Last form — the command affects only the matching user(s).

🫶 Real talk: the quota get and quota recalc commands are only available when the global mail_plugins setting contains the quota plugin. No plugin, no quota commands. That's the vibe check.

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👑 GLOBAL OPTIONS 👑

These are the global doveadm(1) options, bestie:

• -D — Enables verbosity and debug messages. She's chatty and she's telling you everything.
• -O — Do not read any config file, just use defaults. The dovecot_storage_version setting defaults to the latest version, but you can override it with -o. Rawdogging the defaults, respectfully.
• -k — Preserve entire environment for doveadm, not just the import_environment setting.
• -v — Enables verbosity, including progress counter. Little progress bar moment. ⭐
• -i instance-name — If you're using multiple Dovecot instances, choose the config file based on this instance name. See the instance_name setting for more information.
• -c config-file — Read configuration from the given config-file. By default it first reads the config socket, and then falls back to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. You can also point this to the config socket of some instance running a compatible version.
• -o setting=value — Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf and from the userdb with the given value. To override multiple settings, you can specify the -o option multiple times. Stack 'em. 🔥
• -f formatter — Specifies the formatter for formatting the output. The supported formatters are:
  • flow — prints each line with key=value pairs.
  • json — prints a JSON array of JSON objects.
  • pager — prints each key: value pair on its own line and separates records with form feed character (^L).
  • tab — prints a table header followed by tab separated value lines.
  • table — prints a table header followed by adjusted value lines.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -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 matches your database layout.

When using the LDAP userdb module, make sure that the userdb_fields setting and userdb_ldap_iterate_fields setting 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). Globbing but make it mail admin. 🌈

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💜 COMMANDS 💜

quota get 🍓

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] quota get [-A | -u user | -F file]

The quota get command is used to display the current quota usage. The storage values are reported in kilobytes.

This command uses by default the output formatter table.

quota recalc 🧚

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] quota recalc [-A | -u user | -F file]

The quota recalc command is used to recalculate the current quota usage. She's doing the math so you don't have to.

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🌸 FILES 🌸

• /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf — Dovecot's main configuration file, including the dict section.
• /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf — Mailbox locations and namespaces.
• /etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-quota.conf — Quota configuration.

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💅 EXAMPLE 💅

Get the current quota usage of user jane:

doveadm quota get -u jane

Quota name                        Type    Value  Limit  %
user                              STORAGE 90099 102400 87
user                              MESSAGE 20548  30000 68

Look at Jane. 87% of her storage and 68% of her messages. Jane is living. 🙈

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🚨 REPORTING BUGS 🚨

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⟩

bestie, include the doveconf -n output. It's not optional, it's the whole point. 🫶

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• doveadm(1)

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and that's the page, bestie!! this one's Dovecot, version f979264, dated April 2026 — go forth and check your quota, you absolute main character. 💖✨🎀