DOVECOT-LDA(1) Dovecot DOVECOT-LDA(1)
NAME
dovecot-lda - Dovecot's local mail delivery agent
SYNOPSIS
dovecot-lda [-ek] [-a address] [-c config_file] [-d username] [-f enve-
lope_sender] [-m mailbox] [-o setting=value] [-p path] [-r address]
DESCRIPTION
The dovecot-lda is a local mail delivery agent which takes mail from an
MTA and delivers it to a user's mailbox, while keeping Dovecot index
files up to date.
Main features of the dovecot-lda are:
• Mailbox indexing during mail delivery, providing faster mailbox ac-
cess later
• Quota enforcing by the quota plugin
• Sieve language support by the Pigeonhole sieve plugin
OPTIONS
Options accepted by dovecot-lda:
-a address
Destination address (e.g. user+ext@domain). If not specified, de-
fault is based on the lda_original_recipient_header setting setting.
-c config_file
Alternative configuration file path.
-d username
Destination username. If given, the user information is looked up
from userdb. Typically used with virtual users, but not necessarily
with system users.
-e
If mail gets rejected, write the rejection reason to stderr and exit
with status 77 (EX_NOPERM). The default is to send a rejection mail
ourself.
-f envelope_sender
Envelope sender address. If not specified and message data begins
with a valid mbox-style "From " line, the address is taken from it.
-k
Don't clear all environment at startup.
-m mailbox
). If the mailbox doesn't exist, it will not be created (unless
lda_mailbox_autocreate setting). If a message couldn't be saved to
the
• If Sieve plugin is used, this mailbox is used as the keep
action's mailbox. It's also used if there is no Sieve script
or if the script fails for some reason.
• Deliveries to namespace prefix will result in saving the
mail to INBOX instead. For example if you have Mail/ name-
space, this allows you to specify dovecot-lda -m Mail/$mail-
box where mail is stored to Mail/$mailbox or to INBOX if
$mailbox is empty.
•
directory, your namespace configuration is namespace_prefix
setting and namespace_separator setting, the correct way to
deliver mail there is to use
-o setting=value
Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
and from the userdb with the given value. In order to override mul-
tiple settings, the -o option may be specified multiple times.
-p path
Path to the mail to be delivered instead of reading from stdin. If
using maildir the file is hard linked to the destination if possi-
ble. This allows a single mail to be delivered to multiple users us-
ing hard links, but currently it also prevents deliver from updating
cache file so it shouldn't be used unless really necessary.
-r address
Final envelope recipient address. Defaults to -a address, but may
differ if, e.g., aliases are used or when dropping the +detail part.
EXIT STATUS
dovecot-lda will exit with one of the following values:
0
Delivery was successful. (EX_OK)
64
Invalid parameter given. (EX_USAGE)
67
Recipient user not known. (EX_NOUSER)
77
-e option was used and mail was rejected. Typically this happens
when user is over quota and quota_full_tempfail = no is configured.
(EX_NOPERM)
75
A temporary failure. This is returned for almost all failures. See
the log file for details. (EX_TEMPFAIL)
FILES
/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
Dovecot's main configuration file.
/etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf
Mailbox locations and namespaces.
/etc/dovecot/conf.d/15-lda.conf
LDA specific settings.
/etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-plugin.conf
Plugin specific settings.
/etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-quota.conf
Quota configuration.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List
⟨dovecot@dovecot.org⟩. Information about reporting bugs is available at:
https://dovecot.org/bugreport.html
SEE ALSO
doveadm(1)
Related MTA specific documentation:
• Postfix:
• postconf(5), transport(5), pipe(8)
• Exim:
• https://exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch16.html
• https://exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch24.html
• https://exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch29.html
78ffb79 March 2025 DOVECOT-LDA(1)
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