dovecot - May 2022 - dovecot + sieve: message recovery possible after rule pointed to invalid mailbox?

Hi all,

we face the following situation:

1, Customer created a mailbox (aka subfolder) "ABC" and setup a
Pigeonhole Sieve script to file the messages into it. So fine, so good. All
seemed to work out well.

2. Customer renamed the mailbox to, let's say, "CDE" and did not
change the Sieve script accordingly.

3. We noticed this from a ~/.dovecot.sieve.log (after getting a complaint that
messages were not arriving properly anymore :-o ):


"
sieve: info: started log at Apr 28 07:41:11.
error: msgid=<433788c81ea044c4ae49cb39a6f673f3 at
ALB-DC-EXC08.CLPL.INTERN>: failed to store into mailbox 'ABC':
Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information. [2022-04-28
07:41:10].
"

Does anybody in this list know if all these messages went to /dev/null - or
else? If the latter: where/can we restore the messages?
Which "server log" is meant in this error message? 

I couldn't find the information needed by going through
https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/sieve/
<https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/sieve/#> but I wonder if all
the messages end in digital nirvana if a user sieve script points to
non-existing mailboxes?

Thanks for any hint.


Greetings,

C.

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Hi

If the target folder of a sieve script is not existing or doesn't have 
the privileges needed, then the email will be stored in INBOX instead.

Therefore, no email lost ;-)


Kind regards,
Christian Mack

Am 09.05.22 um 17:05 schrieb Charles Gresham:
> Hi all,
> 
> we face the following situation:
> 
> 1, Customer created a mailbox (aka subfolder) "ABC" and setup a
Pigeonhole Sieve script to file the messages into it. So fine, so good. All
seemed to work out well.
> 
> 2. Customer renamed the mailbox to, let's say, "CDE" and did
not change the Sieve script accordingly.
> 
> 3. We noticed this from a ~/.dovecot.sieve.log (after getting a complaint
that messages were not arriving properly anymore :-o ):
> 
> 
> "
> sieve: info: started log at Apr 28 07:41:11.
> error: msgid=<433788c81ea044c4ae49cb39a6f673f3 at
ALB-DC-EXC08.CLPL.INTERN>: failed to store into mailbox 'ABC':
Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information. [2022-04-28
07:41:10].
> "
> 
> Does anybody in this list know if all these messages went to /dev/null - or
else? If the latter: where/can we restore the messages?
> Which "server log" is meant in this error message?
> 
> I couldn't find the information needed by going through
https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/sieve/
<https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/sieve/#> but I wonder if all
the messages end in digital nirvana if a user sieve script points to
non-existing mailboxes?
> 
> Thanks for any hint.
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> C.
> 
> 

-- 
Christian Mack
Universit?t Konstanz
Kommunikations-, Informations-, Medienzentrum (KIM)
Abteilung IT-Dienste Forschung und Lehre
78457 Konstanz
+49 7531 88-4416
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> On 05-09-2022 11:05 am, Charles Gresham wrote:
> 1, Customer created a mailbox (aka subfolder) "ABC" and setup a
Pigeonhole Sieve script to file the messages into it. So fine, so good. All
seemed to work out
> well.
> 
> 2. Customer renamed the mailbox to, let's say, "CDE" and did
not change the Sieve script
> accordingly.
> 
> 3. We noticed this from a ~/.dovecot.sieve.log (after getting a complaint
that messages were not arriving properly anymore

I attempted this behavior on my setup to see what would happen. I changed the
folder name and sent a mail which arrived in the main Inbox since there was no
matching folder name. In the logs i saw...

   .active_sieve.log:
      fileinto action: failed to store into mailbox 'Catch_Testing':
Mailbox doesn't exist: Catch_Testing.

   dovecot lmtp:
      sieve: Execution of script [redacted]/.active_sieve failed, but implicit
keep was successful


Looks like "implicit keep" might be something to investigate.
According to https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/sieve/configuration/
it looks like implicit keep can be over ruled with discard or stop actions.

> error: msgid=<433788c81ea044c4ae49cb39a6f673f3 at
ALB-DC-EXC08.CLPL.INTERN>: failed to store into mailbox 'ABC':
Internal error occurred. Refer to server log for more information. [2022-04-28
> 07:41:10].
> 
> Which "server log" is meant in this error message? 

This would be your mail logs, usually somewhere inside of /var/log/ depending on
your distro.
Sometimes in /var/log/messages or /var/log/maillog or other.