Recipe for setting-up Exim with Dovecot and Sieve?

Recipe for setting-up Exim with Dovecot and Sieve?

[Janneke Nieuwenhuizen]

Hi!

I have been running exim as a strictly forwarding mail server

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(service mail-aliases-service-type
         '(("postmaster"  "janneke")
           ("janneke"     "janneke@gnu.org")))
(service exim-service-type (exim-configuration))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

pretty neat!

After the freedom.nl debacle of blacklisting [eggs.]gnu.org I am now
wondering how (easy it is) to add local storage and IMAP for personal
use only.  It seems to me that Exim also has Sieve builtin and looks at
a user's ~/.forward file (with some magic -- why seems everything
related to email so full of magic?), but that probably won't work/play
well with IMAP?  And for IMAP folders to be filtered using Sieve you
probably need dovecot-pigeonhole to also add Sieve to Dovecot?

I found some useful things on the interwebs but the documentation still
got me wondering about the service configuration, especially the setup
of dovecot with sieve.  Would this work/be enough?

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(service mail-aliases-service-type
         '(("postmaster"  "janneke")
           ("janneke"     "janneke" "janneke@gnu.org")))
(service exim-service-type (exim-configuration))
;; TODO
;; * Do I have to set mail-plugins?
;; * What about managesieve-* (what /is/ managesieve)?
;; * What about plugin-configuration?
;; * Where does pigeonhole read a user's .sieve file?
;; * Do I have to setup/install/configure a sieve server (how)?
(service dovecot-service-type
         (dovecot-configuration
          (protocols
           (list (protocol-configuration
                  (name "imap")
                  (mail-max-userip-connections 1)
                  (mail-plugins (list dovecot-pigeonhole)))))
          (services (list
                     (service-configuration
                      (kind "imap")
                      (client-limit 1))))))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

The documentation talks about plugin-configuration, "the ManageSieve
service", managesieve-notify-capabilities, managesieve-sieve-capability,
are those needed and if so how and what might they be?

It also says "...the Sieve interpreter supports by default", which
suggests there could be different sieve servers (is a sieve server a
MananageSieve server?), but there doesn't seem to be a
[manage-]sieve-service-type ...I'm pretty puzzled.

Any help much appreciated.

Greetings,
Janneke

-- 
Janneke Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>  | GNU LilyPond https://LilyPond.org
Freelance IT https://www.JoyOfSource.com | Avatar® https://AvatarAcademy.com

Re: Recipe for setting-up Exim with Dovecot and Sieve?

[Felix Lechner via]

Hi Janneke,

On Fri, Sep 06 2024, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:

> I am now wondering how (easy it is) to add local storage and IMAP for
> personal use only.

I have not used Sieve and do not like Exim, but this Dovecot setup works
great for me.  [1]

The key is "LAYOUT=fs".  Without it, you get the Maildir++ layout, which
I find harder to work with.

Kind regards,
Felix

[1] https://codeberg.org/lechner/system-config/src/commit/a61e3731399bcd0f26a85688cd7ee37107b3266c/host/wallace-server/operating-system.scm#L1989-L2012