Knowledge Base

Unable to receive email: the recipient email account has an empty password in the Plesk database

Unable to receive an email on a Plesk server for the [email protected] mailbox with the following errors in /var/log/maillog file:

dovecot_authdb_plesk[1377]: No such user '[email protected]' in mail authorization database
dovecot: auth: plesk([email protected]): Mail account information for user='[email protected]' was not found
dovecot: auth: Debug: userdb out: NOTFOUND#0111
dovecot: service=lda, [email protected], ip=[]. Debug: auth input:
postfix/pipe[14513]: E141A88AA5: to=<[email protected], relay=plesk_virtual, delay=2, delays=2/0/0/0.06, dsn=4.2.1, status=deferred (Message can not be delivered at this time )
The same errors appear for the messages that are forwarded externally after switching from Courier to Dovecot.

The recipient email account has an empty password in the Plesk database.

Log into Plesk.
Go to Domains > example.com > Email Addresses > [email protected].
Set a new password into Password and Confirm password fields and press the OK button:

Log into the server via SSH.
Create a backup for psa database:

# plesk db dump psa > /root/psa.sql
Execute the command below to create a /root/affectedaccounts.txt file that contains all email accounts with the empty passwords:

# MYSQL_PWD=`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` mysql -uadmin psa -Ne "select concat(m.mail_name,'@',d.name) as mailbox from domains d, mail m, accounts a where m.dom_id=d.id and m.account_id=a.id and m.postbox='true' and a.password =''" > /root/affectedaccounts.txt
Run the following command to set a new password for the email accounts from /root/affectedaccounts.txt file:

# while read i; do /usr/local/psa/bin/mail -u $i -passwd "NEWPASSWORD"; done < /root/affectedaccounts.txt
Generate as list with mailboxes that currently are in the disabled state but have empty passwords:
# MYSQL_PWD=`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` mysql -uadmin psa -Ne "select concat(m.mail_name,'@',d.name) as mailbox from domains d, mail m, accounts a where m.dom_id=d.id and m.account_id=a.id and m.postbox='false' and a.password =''" > /root/affectedaccountsdisabled.txt
Execute the command below to set a new passwords for the disabled mailboxes as well:

# wget https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/4407744658066/script213928485.tar.gz && tar -xvzf script213928485.tar.gz && chmod +x script.sh && bash script.sh

Note: in the commands from steps №4 and №6 replace NEWPASSWORD with the desired password that will be set for all affected email accounts.