[Dovecot] Sieve user info log

[Perry E. Metzger]

Stephan Bosch <stephan at rename-it.nl> writes:
> Right. There is a per-user <main-script>.log file
> (e.g. .dovecot.sieve.log), but that will only be written when there
> are any errors. Info logging is indeed only available in the syslogs.
>
>> procmail has a facility where you can ask it to log every action it
>> takes. I looked around for a similar facility for sieve and I didn't
>> seem to see it. Did I miss something, or is it absent?
>
> I DO see the merit of this. However, configuring this behavior is an
> interesting issue. If the user log verbosity is configured in the
> Dovecot userdb, it may in many cases still only be configurable by the
> administrator.
>
> An alternative solution would be to provide the logging configuration
> directly in the Sieve script; analogous to the way Procmail handles
> this. This would give users direct control. However, the Sieve
> specification and its extensions currently define no such facility.

I have a few of alternative ideas here:

1) alter the name of the dovecot sieve file somehow to indicate that you
   want logging or other things done (say to .dovecot.sieve,L). This
   seems a bit ugly.
2) have a .dovecot.sieve.conf file that would say whether logging is on
   or not. (alternative names, .dovecot.rc, .dovecot.sieve.rc,
   .dovecot.cf, .dovecot.sieve.cf, etc.)
3) have the presence of a .dovecot.sieve.log file indicate that you want
   verbose logging (and into that file).

> Another problem is that users need filesystem access or some other
> custom (HTTP) interface to read the logs.

True. OTOH, it is probably good to have some okay solution soon, even if
there is a perfect one in the far future.

> The above considerations may warrant starting a draft RFC on
> controlling and accessing Sieve runtime logs.

Agreed...

> But, I'm deviating from the original issue... what is it that you
> truly need right now?

Oh, I don't "truly need" anything today. I have admin privs and can read
the logs myself. However, in the long run, it would be nice to have a
better facility.

BTW, none of this addresses my biggest concern about sieve in general,
which is its fragility. This is impossible to fix in the IMAP
server/sieve facility though -- it is really a client interface issue.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com