Mail does not work after restoring Plesk after disaster: No such user in mail authorization database

Stefan Yakubov

Updated July 27, 2021 07:16

Plesk for Linux kb: technical ABT: Group A

Applicable to:

After restoring Plesk due to disaster. Mail stopped working;
The following error can be found in /var/log/maillog:

CONFIG_TEXT: dovecot_authdb_plesk[5239]: No such user 'john.doe@example.com' in mail authorization database
mchk ( /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/mchk ) utility does not restore authentication database. The below errors can be found in Plesk logs /var/log/plesk/panel.log:

CONFIG_TEXT: ERR [panel] Non-UTF data for mail account: john.doe@example.com

Mailbox passwords can not be decrypted with the /etc/psa/private/secret_key on a new server

Replace secret key with the one from the old server

Log in to Plesk server using SSH
Backup the original key:

# cp /etc/psa/private/secret_key /etc/psa/private/secret_key.orig
Restore the secret key from the old server, put it in the correct directory /etc/psa/private/secret_key and rerun mchk utility:

# cp /etc/psa/private/secret_key /etc/psa/private/secret_key.orig
# cp /old/etc/psa/private/secret_key /etc/psa/private/secret_key

Perform a reset of all of the email accounts passwords

Download and unzip the script:

# wget https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/360009603299/plesk_password_changer_onyx.zip

# unzip plesk_password_changer_onyx.zip
Reset passwords for Plesk users and email accounts:

# /usr/local/psa/bin/sw-engine-pleskrun plesk_password_changer_onyx `cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` --mailaccounts