dovecot - Oct 2009 - deliver+sieve: Destination address (-a) parsing changes

When I upgraded my old, long running dovecot 1.1 to newer dovecot-1.2.4 +
doevecot-sieve-
0.1.12 I observed a change in destination address (-a) parsing.

Old behaviour:
When Timo introduced this feature
(http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2007-September/025813.html)
it was possible to hand over only the detail part. In my sendmail configuration
I used "-a +$h",
where $h contains the detail part and may be empty. By default sendmail can call
the delivery
agent with the following information:
$u: The recipient user (always set)
$h: Detail part, may be empty
$g: The sender address (relative to the recipient).

New behaviour:
The current sieve version needs a complete address with local- and domain-part.
Otherwise
we get a warning like
deliver(user): sieve: envelope recipient address 'user' is unparseable.

The problem is, that the domain part is not always available, e.g. for local
delivered emails.
This is the main problem, although the setup could be simplified if deliver
would accept the
old syntax. I'm going to make modifications to sendmail to be able to have
all address
information available, but this will not solve the problem with missing domain.


Now comes my question:
Is it better to enhance the address parsing in sieve plugin or should I use a
wrapper around
deliver? The latter is not very difficult, but introduces an additional process
(that may fail).

Regards,
   Frank

-- 
Frank Behrens, Osterwieck, Germany
PGP-key 0x5B7C47ED on public servers available.

On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 21:13 +0200, Frank Behrens wrote:
> When Timo introduced this feature
> (http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2007-September/025813.html)
> it was possible to hand over only the detail part. In my sendmail
configuration I used "-a +$h",
> where $h contains the detail part and may be empty. 
Well, I can say I never intended for it to work that way..

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Timo Sirainen <dovecot at dovecot.org> wrote on 20 Oct 2009
18:53:
> On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 21:13 +0200, Frank Behrens wrote:
> > When Timo introduced this feature
> > (http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2007-September/025813.html)
> > it was possible to hand over only the detail part. In my sendmail
configuration I used "-a +$h",
> > where $h contains the detail part and may be empty. 
> 
> Well, I can say I never intended for it to work that way..
 
Yes, I believe that, it looks ugly. But that way it was easily to setup with
sendmail.

It seems that sendmail's LDA interface does not exactly match deliver's
expectations. Hm, do
we must support sendmail? No, but it is one of the most used mailservers. So
what?
1. modify sendmail
2. modify deliver
3. insert a wrapper
4. ???

Now I tend to 3, but 2. would have the advantage to make dovecot more robust,
also in
collaboration with other MTAs.

-- 
Frank Behrens, Osterwieck, Germany
PGP-key 0x5B7C47ED on public servers available.

"Frank Behrens" <frank at ilse.behrens.de>
wrote:
> When I upgraded my old, long running dovecot 1.1 to newer dovecot-1.2.4 +
doevecot-sieve-
> 0.1.12 I observed a change in destination address (-a) parsing.
>
> Old behaviour:
> When Timo introduced this feature
> (http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2007-September/025813.html)
> it was possible to hand over only the detail part. In my sendmail
configuration I used "-a +$h",
> where $h contains the detail part and may be empty. By default sendmail can
call the delivery
> agent with the following information:
> $u: The recipient user (always set)
> $h: Detail part, may be empty
> $g: The sender address (relative to the recipient).
>
> New behaviour:
> The current sieve version needs a complete address with local- and
> domain-part. Otherwise we get a warning like
> deliver(user): sieve: envelope recipient address 'user' is
unparseable.
>
> The problem is, that the domain part is not always available, e.g. for
> local delivered emails.  This is the main problem, although the setup
> could be simplified if deliver would accept the old syntax. I'm going
> to make modifications to sendmail to be able to have all address
> information available, but this will not solve the problem with
> missing domain.
>
> Now comes my question: Is it better to enhance the address parsing in
> sieve plugin or should I use a wrapper around deliver? The latter is
> not very difficult, but introduces an additional process (that may
> fail).
It is possible to "significantly" twist sendmail.cf use $h to select
dovecot's mailbox and $u to pass user+detail at domain (one *or many*).
[ BTW the way I think about  will make sendmail support "alises with
domains" instead 
of current "aliases after domain stripping"] 

It is not a big deal if:
* all dovecot's mailboxes are owned by single non root OS account
* sendmail is supposed to start dovecot-deliver with root privileges

P.S.
I have written a few sendmail.cf recipients intended to support more
than "one and the only" local mailer.

-- 
[pl>en: Andrew] Andrzej Adam Filip : anfi at onet.eu
CF&C stole it, fair and square.
  -- Tim Hahn

Andrzej Adam Filip <anfi at onet.eu> wrote on 21 Oct 2009
9:21:
> It is possible to "significantly" twist sendmail.cf use $h to
select
> dovecot's mailbox and $u to pass user+detail at domain (one *or many*).
> [ BTW the way I think about  will make sendmail support "alises with
> domains" instead 
> of current "aliases after domain stripping"] 
> 
> It is not a big deal if:
> * all dovecot's mailboxes are owned by single non root OS account
> * sendmail is supposed to start dovecot-deliver with root privileges
> 
> P.S.
> I have written a few sendmail.cf recipients intended to support more
> than "one and the only" local mailer.
Fine, it sounds promising. So I will see, what I can do with a modified rule
set. May be it's a
good idea to have a special dovecot local mailer with matching envelope
rewriting rules.

Thanks!
   Frank

-- 
Frank Behrens, Osterwieck, Germany
PGP-key 0x5B7C47ED on public servers available.