If for any reason your Dovecot process is killed, you need to run the following command to restart it.
sudo systemctl restart dovecot
Instead of manually typing this command, we can make Dovecot automatically restart by editing the dovecot.service systemd service unit. To override the default systemd service configuration, we create a separate directory.
sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/dovecot.service.d/
Then create a file under this directory.
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/dovecot.service.d/restart.conf
Add the following lines in the file, which will make Dovecot automatically restart 5 seconds after a failure is detected.
[Service] Restart=always RestartSec=5s
Save and close the file. Then reload systemd for the changes to take effect.
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
To check if this would work, kill Dovecot with:
sudo pkill dovecot
Then check Dovecot status. You will find Dovecot automatically restarted.
systemctl status dovecot
