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() Dovecot ()
dovecot-lda - Dovecot's local mail delivery agent

SYNOPSIS

dovecot-lda [-ek] [-a address] [-c config_file] [-d username] [-f envelope_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 access 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, default 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/ namespace, this allows you to specify dovecot-lda -m Mail/$mailbox where mail is stored to Mail/$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 multiple 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 possible. This allows a single mail to be delivered to multiple users using 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:

March 2025 78ffb79