Dovecot starting and running, but not listening on any port
Solution 1:
You're missing a protocols directive to tell Dovecot which protocols to serve.
An example:
protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s
Solution 2:
I realize this is an old question with an equally old answer, but on Ubuntu and Debian installs there is /usr/share/dovecot/protocols.d/ directory that should contain .protocol files. These are separate packages that one can install outside of the main Dovecot install. As explained here on the official Ubuntu page for Dovecot:
The installation is extremely simple, just install the following packages:
- dovecot-imapd
- dovecot-pop3d
For example, using apt-get:
sudo apt-get install dovecot-imapd dovecot-pop3d
So I recommend that you just go ahead and install those packages like this:
sudo apt-get install dovecot-imapd dovecot-pop3d
Pretty sure after you do that and then check the /usr/share/dovecot/protocols.d/ directory you will see some .protocol files in there. Just restart Dovecot after doing that and you should be good. And feel free to install other .protocol files as needed.