() Dovecot () dovecot-lda - Dovecot's local mail delivery agent SYNOPSIS dovecot-lda [-ek] [-a address] [-c config_file] [-d username] [-f envelope_sender] [-m mailbox] [-o setting=value] [-p path] [-r address] DESCRIPTION The dovecot-lda is a local mail delivery agent which takes mail from an MTA and delivers it to a user's mailbox, while keeping Dovecot index files up to date. Main features of the dovecot-lda are: o Mailbox indexing during mail delivery, providing faster mailbox access later o Quota enforcing by the quota plugin o Sieve language support by the Pigeonhole sieve plugin OPTIONS Options accepted by dovecot-lda: -a address Destination address (e.g. user+ext@domain). If not specified, default is based on the lda_original_recipient_header setting setting. -c config_file Alternative configuration file path. -d username Destination username. If given, the user information is looked up from userdb. Typically used with virtual users, but not necessarily with system users. -e If mail gets rejected, write the rejection reason to stderr and exit with status 77 (EX_NOPERM). The default is to send a rejection mail ourself. -f envelope_sender Envelope sender address. If not specified and message data begins with a valid mbox-style "From " line, the address is taken from it. -k Don't clear all environment at startup. -m mailbox Destination mailbox (default is INBOX). If the mailbox doesn't exist, it will not be created (unless lda_mailbox_autocreate setting). If a message couldn't be saved to the mailbox for any reason, it's delivered to INBOX instead. o If Sieve plugin is used, this mailbox is used as the keep action's mailbox. It's also used if there is no Sieve script or if the script fails for some reason. o Deliveries to namespace prefix will result in saving the mail to INBOX instead. For example if you have Mail/ namespace, this allows you to specify dovecot-lda -m Mail/$mailbox where mail is stored to Mail/$mailbox or to INBOX if $mailbox is empty. o The mailbox name is specified the same as it's visible in IMAP client. For example if you've a Maildir with .box.sub/ directory, your namespace configuration is namespace_prefix setting and namespace_separator setting, the correct way to deliver mail there is to use -m INBOX/box/sub -o setting=value Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf and from the userdb with the given value. In order to override multiple settings, the -o option may be specified multiple times. -p path Path to the mail to be delivered instead of reading from stdin. If using maildir the file is hard linked to the destination if possible. This allows a single mail to be delivered to multiple users using hard links, but currently it also prevents deliver from updating cache file so it shouldn't be used unless really necessary. -r address Final envelope recipient address. Defaults to -a address, but may differ if, e.g., aliases are used or when dropping the +detail part. EXIT STATUS dovecot-lda will exit with one of the following values: 0 Delivery was successful. (EX_OK) 64 Invalid parameter given. (EX_USAGE) 67 Recipient user not known. (EX_NOUSER) 77 -e option was used and mail was rejected. Typically this happens when user is over quota and quota_full_tempfail = no is configured. (EX_NOPERM) 75 A temporary failure. This is returned for almost all failures. See the log file for details. (EX_TEMPFAIL) FILES /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf Dovecot's main configuration file. /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf Mailbox locations and namespaces. /etc/dovecot/conf.d/15-lda.conf LDA specific settings. /etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-plugin.conf Plugin specific settings. /etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-quota.conf Quota configuration. REPORTING BUGS Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List . Information about reporting bugs is available at: SEE ALSO doveadm(1) Related MTA specific documentation: o Postfix: o postconf(5), transport(5), pipe(8) o Exim: o o o e5ac02a May 2026 ()