Archiving mails with postfix: how to filter mails

email-serverfilterpostfix

i wanto to implement the following scenario:

we use a postfix mailserver. to archive all old and new mails, i want to setup a second postfix on our fileserver and create a single mailbox "archive". then every mail gets forwarded as bcc to this mailbox automatically. now, i want to create different folders in a maildir structure and let the server move each mail to the right subfolder of the mailbox based on its sender or receiver.

e.g. when we get a mail to one of our employees named "John Doe" at john.doe@foo.bar, the mail should be moved to "Inbox/John Doe Incoming". the same applies when john doe sends a mail, folder would be "Inbox/John Doe Outgoing".

how can i implement this filter behaviour. i heard of Procmail and Maildrop. Which of the two would you prefer? Which is more easy to configure? Any out-of-box solutions here?

thanks in advance!

Best Answer

Why not use sender_bcc_maps and recipient_bcc_maps to copy mail to a dedicated archive domain - say, archive.foo.bar - delivered via transport(5) to an MDA that stores archived mail in dedicated mailboxes?

No second instance needed, and clean solution all-round.

You can use a regex or PCRE map type to map al senders or recipients to mailboxes in the archive domain, e.g.:

/etc/postfix/sender-archive-pcre: /^(.*)@foo\.bar$/ $1-outbound@archive.foo.bar

/etc/postfix/recipient-archive-pcre: /^(.*)@foo\.bar$/ $1-inbound@archive.foo.bar

And in transport(5): @archive.foo.bar unix:your-archive-mda

As for which delivery agent to use: I very strongly suggest you use dovecot 2.x, either the deliver mda or the LMTP server; both have full sieve filter support with the pigeonhole plugin.

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Postfix – How to Auto Create Maildir on Debian Email Server

The answer to this varies depending on how your Postfix system is configured. You mention pam and LDAP, so I assume you have all your domains in $mydestination, or you use only one domain (example.com, for instance)

It may be easier for you to configure virtual_mailbox_domains with LDAP maps instead of mysql/pgsql maps (the logic is exactly the same though).

You create a single system user, without login privileges. I shall assume a username and group of vmail:vmail here, but the specific name is not important.

In LDAP, create your mailbox path relative to $HOME for vmail (so the maildir becomes /home/vmail/user/Maildir/).

Add your domains to virtual_mailbox_domains. Create a virtual_mailbox_maps map which takes in the username as input and returns username/Maildir as output.

Set


virtual_mailbox_domains = example.com
virtual_mailbox_base = /home/vmail/
virtual_mailbox_maps = ldap:/etc/postfix/ldap_virtual.cf
virtual_uid_maps = static:$uid_of_vmail
virtual_gid_maps = static:$gid_of_vmail
#$uid_of_vmail and $gid_of_vmail are obtained from the output of 
#id vmail

in main.cf.

See http://www.postfix.org/ldap_table.5.html and http://www.postfix.org/VIRTUAL_README.html for more information (and what you need to put in ldap_virtual.cf).

FWIW, Postfix runs the local delivery process as the uid/gid of the system user you are delivering to.

The general permissions for /home are 755 with owner and group both root, but the user can write within ~user. Hence Postfix will happily deliver to ~user/Maildir/, but will not be able to create ~user. Using virtual users will sidestep this issue by granting access to all mailboxes to a single uid/gid, which is then accessed only by your pop3/imap software. Direct access to the mailbox by users will not be possible.

Linux – How to close an open relay in Postfix

I just ran an open relay test from http://www.abuse.net/relay.html and your server passed all the 17 relay tests? May be a local user himself is using your server for abuse.

Best Answer

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