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

Ivan Kamnev

Updated January 13, 2026 18:59

Plesk for Linux kb: technical ABT: Group B

Applicable to:

Unable to receive an email on a Plesk server for the johndoe@example.com mailbox with the following errors in /var/log/maillog file:

CONFIG_TEXT: dovecot_authdb_plesk[1377]: No such user 'johndoe@example.com' in mail authorization database
dovecot: auth: plesk(johndoe@example.com): Mail account information for user='johndoe@example.com' was not found
dovecot: auth: Debug: userdb out: NOTFOUND#0111
dovecot: service=lda, user=johndoe@example.com, ip=[]. Debug: auth input:
postfix/pipe[14513]: E141A88AA5: to=<johndoe@example.com, 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 internally after switching from Courier to Dovecot.

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

For a single email account

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

For all affected email accounts

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.