SIEVEC(1) Dovecot SIEVEC(1)
NAME
sievec - Pigeonhole's Sieve script compiler
SYNOPSIS
sievec [options] script-file [out-file]
DESCRIPTION
The sievec command is part of Pigeonhole (pigeonhole(7)), which adds
Sieve (RFC 5228) and ManageSieve (RFC 5804) support to Dovecot (dove-
cot(1)).
Using the sievec 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 mes-
sages 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).
Usually, it is not necessary to compile the Sieve script manually using
sievec, because dovecot-lda(1) will do this automatically if the binary
is missing. However, in some cases dovecot-lda(1) does not have permis-
sion to write the compiled binary to disk, forcing it to recompile the
script every time it is executed. Using the sievec tool, this can be
performed manually by an authorized user to increase performance.
The Pigeonhole Sieve implementation recognizes files with a .sieve
extension as Sieve scripts and corresponding files with a .svbin exten-
sion 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when it is missing or outdated.
The sievec command is also useful to verify Sieve scripts before using.
Additionally, with the -d 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
Don't write the binary to out-file, but write a textual dump of the
binary instead. In this context, the out-file value '-' has special
meaning: it causes the textual dump to be written to stdout. The
out-file argument may also be omitted, which has the same effect as
'-'. The output is identical to what the sieve-dump(1) command pro-
duces for a compiled Sieve binary file. Note that this option is
not allowed when the out-file argument is a directory.
-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 compila-
tion 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 directory.
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 std-
out.
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 AT 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)
2b97ab9 March 2026 SIEVEC(1)
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