Mail filter and rules

You can filter your incoming mails with Sieve. Sieve scripts can be used to automatically delete or forward messages, to send autoreplies, to sort emails into folders as they arrive, to mark messages as read or flagged or to reject messages at or after delivery.

A Sieve script consists of a number of conditions which are applied to incoming mail; if an email matches a test, then the actions associated with that test are performed.

Manage Sieve Scripts

Many E-Mail clients support the ManageSieve protocoll. You can find a list of tools and plugins at sieve.info. We plan to implement a rule editor in our webmailer soon.

Tip

We recommend the Sieve Script Editor which has a GUI to drag and drop the rules and is availible for many platforms.

ManageSieve

Server	your Hostname
Port	4190
Username	Your email address, including the domain
Password	Your password for the email address

You can store as many Sieve Scripts as you like but only one can be active at a time.

Scripts

There’s a good Sieve reference online which describes the components which make up a script.

Examples

In this example we sort mails from a mailinglist into a folder, sort mails to *@allcolorsarebeautiful.example into another folder and lower the maximum spam score to 4.

require ["fileinto", "reject", "comparator-i;ascii-numeric","relational"];

# Mails with a spam score greater than 4 are probably SPAM, sort them and stop
if header :value "ge" :comparator "i;ascii-numeric" "X-Rspamd-Score" "4"
{
    fileinto "Spam";
    stop;
}

# Sort mails from mailinglist into folder mailinglist
if address :is "from" ["mailinglist@allcolorsarebeautiful.example", "anothermailinglist@allcolorsarebeautiful.example" ]
{
    fileinto "mailinglist";
    stop;
}

# Sort mails to *@allcolorsarebeautiful.example into a special folder
if address :is :domain "to" "allcolorsarebeautiful.example"
{
    fileinto "important";
    stop;
}

# The command "keep" is executed automatically, if no other action is taken.

Tip

stop; tells the Sieve engine to stop here, without checking for more rules.

You can find many more examples in the Dovecot Wiki.

Troubleshooting

The spamfolder needs to be enabled to enable sieve support.

[eliza@dolittle ~]$ uberspace mail spamfolder enable
The spam folder is now enabled.
[eliza@dolittle ~]$ uberspace mail spamfolder status
The spam folder is enabled.

If something does not work check the logs at ~/users/$MAILBOX/.dovecot.sieve.log. Fastmail’s Sieve Tester tests the syntax of scripts and checks what actions a script causes to the provided email message.

Background

Sieve scripts are stored in the file system in the corresponding mailbox ~/users/$MAILBOX/Sieve/. To enable a script, you have to create a symlink from ~/users/$MAILBOX/.dovecot.sieve to the script file:

[eliza@dolittle ~]$ ln -s ~/users/$MAILBOX/sieve/test.sieve ~/users/$MAILBOX/.dovecot.sieve
[eliza@dolittle ~/users/anna]$ ls -la
[...]
lrwxrwxrwx.  1 eliza eliza  42  1. Apr 10:11 .dovecot.sieve -> /home/eliza/users/anna/sieve/test.sieve
[...]

Tip

When using ManageSieve scripts are compiled before they are installed, which guarantees that the uploaded script is valid. This can prevent you from inadvertently installing a broken Sieve script.