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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       when it is missing or outdated.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)