imap-sieve, question concerning "sieve_user_email" and variables, migration from 2.3 to 2.4

Claus-Justus Heine via dovecot <[email protected]> Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:11:59 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.mail.imap.dovecot
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi there,

I have a question concerning the configuration setting

sieve_user_email

In a v2.3 setup I had it set to

sieve_user_email = %[email protected]

Now I am trying to migrate to v2.4 and thought the direct translation 
from the old variable expansion scheme to the new scheme deployed in 
v2.4 would be

sieve_user_email = %{user|username|lower}@some.concrete.domain

However, this does not work. Testing the documentation yields the 
following error:

# dovecot -n -c dovecot.conf > /dev/null
doveconf: Error: sieve: sieve settings: Failed to parse configuration: 
Failed to expand sieve_user_email setting variables: Unknown variable 'user'
doveconf: Fatal: Error in configuration file dovecot.conf: Failed to 
initialize Sieve

Setting "sieve_user_email" to something without variable expansion or 
just commenting it out yields a configuration which is accepted by 
"dovecot -n".

Now I wonder:

a) v2.3 did not complain. But perhaps just because it was using "%Ln" 
literally?

b) In case it did work in v2.3, should it work in v2.4 also? And if so: 
what would be the correct syntax / variable names?

c) Under which circumstances is this setting "sieve_user_email" used? 
The documentation states:

https://doc.dovecot.org/main/core/summaries/settings.html#sieve_user_email

> The primary e-mail address for the user.
> 
> This is used as a default when no other appropriate address is available for sending messages.
> 
> If this setting is not configured, either the postmaster or null <> address is used as a sender, depending on the action involved.
> 
> This setting is important when there is no message envelope to extract addresses from, such as when the script is executed in IMAP.

I thought that then it would make sense to use something which depends 
on the login-name of the IMAP-user? Or was this "sieve_user_email" 
intended to hold just one static email like 
"[email protected]"?

Kind thanks for clarification, best regards

Claus

-- 
Claus-Justus Heine                      [email protected]
http://www.claus-justus-heine.de/

Schatzmeister der Camerata Academica Freiburg e.V.  ---  www.cafev.de

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