Dovecot cannot connect to MySQL

Question

I'm trying to configure dovecot on my server, and whenever I'm trying to connect, I'm getting this as the response in the /var/log/mail.log file.

This is the line I have in the /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf.ext file that contains the connect line.

connect = host=127.0.0.1 dbname=servermail user=mailadmin password='pass#12@FQ'

Even though I'm specifying to connect to mysql via 127.0.0.1, it's going to localhost in that log.

I verified, I can login to mysql via terminal myself using the command:

$ mysql -u mailadmin -h 127.0.0.1 -p

How to get this to work?

UPDATE:

This is the output of grants:

Please provide output of "SHOW GRANTS FOR mailadmin@localost" — Andreas Rogge, Jul 13 '19 at 11:01
@AndreasRogge The grants are for 'mailadmin'@'127.0.0.1' instead of mailadmin@localhost — Sri Harsha Chilakapati, Jul 13 '19 at 11:05
@AndreasRogge My MySQL is a default MariaDB installation, and it is only working with 127.0.0.1 and not localhost. — Sri Harsha Chilakapati, Jul 13 '19 at 11:05
just duplicate them for mailadmin@localhost and you're good. — Andreas Rogge, Jul 13 '19 at 11:05
@AndreasRogge No luck, I'm able to login to mysql via mailadmin@localhost from terminal, but dovecat is still printing the same message. — Sri Harsha Chilakapati, Jul 13 '19 at 11:25
Why have you set `host=127.0.0.1` and not the expected `host=localhost`? — Michael Hampton, Jul 13 '19 at 16:36
Related: https://serverfault.com/questions/973454/dovecot-auth-sql-driver-not-respecting-sql-username-options-how-do-i-get-around#comment1266725_973454 — anx, Jul 14 '19 at 10:40
@anx That was exactly the reason. I guess dovecot is treating whatever after the # as a comment and leaving it. Changing the password got it to work. — Sri Harsha Chilakapati, Jul 14 '19 at 12:11

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 14 '19 at 12:10

Thanks to @anx in the comments, I found the solution to this issue. Creating a new user is not necessary. The problem is that I had a special character in the configuration file.

connect = host=127.0.0.1 dbname=servermail user=mailadmin password='pass#12@FQ'

When I say like this, dovecot is trying to send the password as 'pass to the server.

The issue is because of the configuration file format. There is no escape character that I knew for this. So the parser of dovecot is reading the entire line and treating whatever that's coming after the # as the comment.

The actual solution was to change the password of the user in MySQL.

Dovecot cannot connect to MySQL

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