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I have set up my email server following the ISPMail tutorial with virtual users in postfix + dovecot + sieve. My problem is: the envelop "variable" in sieve does not contain the original recipient.

I have a mail account, let's call it [email protected] and additional aliases set up for postfix which all deliver to the aforementioned address:

[email protected] -> [email protected] @domain.com -> [email protected]

The latter being an catch-all address.

Postfix calls dovecot with the following config line in master.cfg:

dovecot unix - n n - - pipe flags=DRhu user=vmail:vmail argv=/usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -f ${sender} -d ${user}@${nexthop} -a ${recipient}

With sieve I want to put all mails received for the catch-all address into a specific folder. My sieve code looks like this:

if envelope :is :domain "To" "domain.com" { fileinto "special-folder"; }

This sadly does not work. Digging further I found out that what's inside envelop always is the final delivery address, i.e. [email protected] in this case. I found this using the following rule:

if envelope :matches "To" "*" { fileinto "${1}"; }

And the sieve log telling me:

failed to store into mailbox '[email protected]': Mailbox doesn't exist: [email protected].

I'm already guessing that this has to be a problem somewhere between postfix and dovecot as the mail log tells me the following:

Aug 29 10:38:27 *** dovecot: lda([email protected]): sieve: msgid=<54003C01.1080704@***>: stored mail into mailbox 'INBOX' Aug 29 10:38:27 *** dovecot: lda([email protected]): Error: sieve: execution of script /var/vmail/example.org/mail/dovecot.sieve failed, but implicit keep was successful (user logfile /var/vmail/example.org/mail/dovecot.sieve.log may reveal additional details) Aug 29 10:38:27 *** postfix/pipe[12469]: A31A28006B: to=<[email protected]>, orig_to=<[email protected]>, relay=dovecot, delay=0.29, delays=0.18/0.01/0/0.1, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered via dovecot service)

Obviously postfix states the original recipient ([email protected]) and the mailbox delivered to ([email protected]) but somehow this information gets lost on the way to dovecot?!

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This behavior happened because you add {recipient} macro in dovecot-lda argument. As stated in man pipe, the postfix will replace that macro with final recipient (mail.example.org) instead of not original ones ([email protected]).

Instead of parsing envelope, you can parsing another header like X-Original-To. This header intended to preserve the original recipient before rewriting or aliasing. To enable this header, edit master.cf so the dovecot line become (notice that flag argument was edited)

dovecot unix - n n - - pipe flags=DROhu user=vmail:vmail argv=/usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -f ${sender} -d ${user}@${nexthop} -a ${recipient}

Then your sieve script become

if header :matches "X-Original-To" "*" { fileinto "${1}"; }

A bit complicated but the result is you can have original recipient and its aliases.

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  • This sounds good and linking to the pipe manual gave me an even better idea: replacing ${recipient} by ${original_recipient} does just what I need. Hopefully there are no problems with this but after some testing I don't see any. Commented Aug 30, 2014 at 18:44
  • Good job @Artemis. You should award your self by accepting your own answer. Commented Aug 31, 2014 at 23:10
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After some testing (the answer by masegaloeh and the help of a friend provided some useful hints) there are two ways (both seem to work equally good):

  1. Use ${original_recipient} instead of ${recipient}:

    As man pipe tells us "This macro expands to the complete recipient address before any address rewriting or aliasing" so it is the solution to my problem. So the modified command line in master.cf should look like

    dovecot unix - n n - - pipe flags=DRhu user=vmail:vmail argv=/usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -f ${sender} -d ${user}@${nexthop} -a ${original_recipient}

  2. Use a X-Original-To header an tell dovecot to set its envelope to this header field:

    As masegaloeh suggested I add O to the flags telling postfix to add the X-Original-To header. Inside /etc/dovecot/conf.d/15-lda.conf I tell dovecot to use this header for its envelope:

    lda_original_recipient_header = X-Original-To

    As the comment above this config options tells us, we must not use the -a option when calling dovecot-lda via postfix because it overrides this setting. Thus the master.cf looks like:

    dovecot unix - n n - - pipe flags=DORhu user=vmail:vmail argv=/usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -f ${sender} -d ${user}@${nexthop}
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    And what about if using LMTP instead LDA? Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 16:06
  • I am using mailbox_command instead of the master.cf entry and I had some issues invalid user bounces when trying to swap -a for -d. However, just removing -a worked for me. Commented Aug 15, 2018 at 22:50
  • @sebelk it seems postfix still doesn't allow passing X-Original-To via LMTP, so postfix + dovecot-lmtp + sieve is still not possible (without workarounds which have privacy issues). Commented Aug 31, 2021 at 23:12

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