[Dovecot] Quick question...

[tomas at tuxteam.de]

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On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 02:28:50PM -0600, dovecot at segel.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Here's the scenario.
> 
> I want to set up a mailbox so that when mail sent to the address is piped to
> a processing application, instead of going to a mailbox.

Conceptually, when a mail arrives there are two processes involved: the
mail transfer agent (MTA) and the mail delivery agent (MDA). The mail
transfer agent takes the mail from "the net" (typically from another
MTA) and decides whether the mail has to be delivered locally (then it
passes it on to the MDA) or remotely (then it passes it on to another
MTA).

Note that Dovecot doesn't enter this picture at all (yet). Its primary
job is serving up mail to end-users when it has already been delivered.

All that said, most MTAs (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail, Qmail, you name it)
bring along with them delivery functions (can fill in the role of MDAs).
The dovecot distribution brings along with it a delivery agent (deliver)
which you can configure to play many tricks on delivery via a language
designed explicitly for that (called Sieve), and there are quite powerful
"third party" delivery agents (e.g. procmail).

So, to sum up your best bet would be:

 - if the requirements are simple, like "pipe all mail going to this
   user through this program", do as Justin said and tell your mail
   transfer agent to do that. To be able to give you any hints, I should
   at least know the beast by name ;-)

 - if the task is more complex (e.g. depending on other headers, time of
   day, you name it), then just tell the MTA to push it to the MDA (most
   come preconfigured to do that anyway, if circumstances are right) and
   tweak the MDA configuration to achieve that.

Hope that helps. Things can be a bit confusing at the beginning.

Regards
- -- tomás

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