SIEVEC(1) Dovecot SIEVEC(1)
NAME
sievec - Pigeonhole's Sieve script compiler
SYNOPSIS
sievec [options] script-file [out-file]
DESCRIPTION
command is part of Pigeonhole (pigeonhole(7)), which adds Sieve (RFC
5228) and ManageSieve (RFC 5804) support to Dovecot (dovecot(1)).
command, Sieve scripts can be compiled into a binary representation.
The resulting binary can be used directly to process e-mail messages
during the delivery process. The delivery of mail messages and - by
means of the LDA Sieve plugin - also the execution of Sieve scripts is
performed by Dovecot's local delivery agent (LDA) called dovecot-lda(1).
, because dovecot-lda(1) will do this automatically if the binary is
missing. However, in some cases dovecot-lda(1) does not have permission
to write the compiled binary to disk, forcing it to recompile the script
every time it is executed. Using the
The Pigeonhole Sieve implementation recognizes files with a .sieve ex-
tension as Sieve scripts and corresponding files with a .svbin extension
as the associated compiled binary. This means for example that Dovecot's
LDA process will first look for a binary file "dovecot.svbin" when it
needs to execute "dovecot.sieve". It will compile a new binary when it
is missing or outdated.
option it can output a textual (and thus human-readable) dump of the
generated Sieve code to the specified file. The output is then identical
to what the sieve-dump(1) command produces for a stored binary file.
This output is mainly useful to find bugs in the compiler that yield
corrupt binaries.
OPTIONS
-c config-file
Alternative Dovecot configuration file path.
-d
argument may also be omitted, which has the same effect as '-'. The
output is identical to what the sieve-dump(1) command produces for a
compiled Sieve binary file. Note that this option is not allowed
when the
-D
Enable Sieve debugging.
-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.
-u user/mask
Run the command only for the given user. It's also possible to use
'*' and '?' wildcards (e.g. -u *@example.org).
-x auth_info
auth_info specifies additional conditions for the user command. The
auth_info option string has to be given as name = value pair. For
multiple conditions the -x option could be supplied multiple times.
Possible names for the auth_info are:
service
The service for which the userdb lookup should be tested. The
value may be the name of a service, commonly used with Dovecot.
For example: imap, pop3 or smtp.
session
Session identifier.
lip
The local IP address (server) for the test.
rip
The remote IP address (client) for the test.
lport
The local port, e.g. 143
rport
The remote port, e.g. 24567
real_lip
The local IP to which the client connected on this host.
real_rip
The remote IP where client connected from to this host.
real_lport
The local port to which client connected to to this host.
real_rport
The remote port from where the client connected from to this host.
forward_<field>
Field to forward as %{forward:field} to auth process.
ARGUMENTS
script-file
Specifies the script to be compiled. If the script-file argument is
a directory, all files in that directory with a .sieve extension are
compiled into a corresponding .svbin binary file. The compilation is
not halted upon errors; it attempts to compile as many scripts in
the directory as possible. Note that the -d option and the out-file
argument are not allowed when the script-file argument is a direc-
tory.
out-file
Specifies where the (binary) output is to be written. This argument
is optional. If this argument is omitted, a binary compiled from
<scriptname>.sieve is saved as <scriptname>.svbin. If this argument
is omitted and -b is specified, the binary dump is output to stdout.
EXIT STATUS
sievec will exit with one of the following values:
0
Compile was successful. (EX_OK, EXIT_SUCCESS)
1
Operation failed. This is returned for almost all failures.
(EXIT_FAILURE)
64
Invalid parameter given. (EX_USAGE)
67
User does not exist.
68
Input file, address or other resource does not exist.
73
Cannot create output file.
77
Permission error.
78
Configuration error.
127
Unknown error.
FILES
/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
Dovecot's main configuration file.
/etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-sieve.conf
Sieve interpreter settings (included from Dovecot's main
configuration file)
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
dovecot(1), dovecot-lda(1), sieve-dump(1), sieve-filter(1), sieve-
test(1), pigeonhole(7)
78ffb79 March 2025 SIEVEC(1)
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