Sieve Filters

Overview

Sieve (RFC5228) is a scripting language for filtering email messages at or around the time of final delivery. It is suitable for running on a mail server where users may not be allowed to execute arbitrary programs as it has no user-controlled loops or the ability to run external programs. Sieve is a data-driven programming language, similar to earlier email filtering languages such as procmail and maildrop, and earlier line-oriented languages such as sed and AWK: it specifies conditions to match and actions to take on matching.

Stalwart JMAP includes support for JMAP for Sieve Scripts as well as ManageSieve (via Stalwart IMAP), which allows users to upload and manage their Sieve scripts.

Extensions

Stalwart JMAP includes support for all existing Sieve extensions which are enabled by default. However, system administrators might want to disable certain extensions such as enotify which allow users to send outgoing emails from a script, or extensions that allow modifying the contents of a message such as editheader, replace or enclose.

Disabling Sieve extensions can be done by setting the sieve-disable-capabilities with the capabilities to disable separated by a space, for example:

sieve-disable-capabilities: editheader replace enclose enotify

Compiler Parameters

Sieve scripts are compiled immediately after they are uploaded in order to speed up their execution during the message delivery stage. The following parameters enforce different limits on Sieve scripts at compile time:

  • sieve-max-script-size: Maximum size of a Sieve script in bytes. Defaults to 1048576 (1MB).
  • sieve-max-string-size: Maximum size of a constant string. Defaults to 4096.
  • sieve-max-variable-name-size: Maximum length of a variable name. Defaults to 32.
  • sieve-max-nested-blocks: Maximum number of nested if / elsif / else blocks. Defaults to 15.
  • sieve-max-nested-tests: Maximum number of nested tests. Defaults to 15.
  • sieve-max-nested-foreverypart: Maximum number of nested foreverypart loops. Defaults to 3.
  • sieve-max-match-variables: Maximum number of matches and regex variables that can be captured. Defaults to 30.
  • sieve-max-local-variables: Maximum number of local variables that can be in scope at any given time. Defaults to 128.
  • sieve-max-header-size: Maximum length of an RFC822 header value. Defaults to 1024.
  • sieve-max-includes: Maximum number of include instructions per script. Defaults to 3.

Runtime Parameters

Sieve scripts are safely executed in a controlled sandbox that ensures that scripts do not exceed or abuse their allocated system resources. The following parameters enforce different limits on Sieve scripts at execution time:

  • sieve-cpu-limit: Maximum number of instructions that a script can execute (including instructions from include scripts). Defaults to 5000.
  • sieve-max-nested-includes: Maximum number of nested include. Defaults to 3.
  • sieve-max-variable-size: Maximum length of a variable, after this limit variable contents are truncated. Defaults to 4096.
  • sieve-max-redirects: Maximum number of message redirections per execution. Defaults to 1.
  • sieve-max-received-headers: Maximum number of Received headers before a message is considered to be in a loop. Defaults to 10.
  • sieve-max-header-size: Maximum length of a message header. Defaults to 1024.
  • sieve-max-outgoing-messages: Maximum number of outgoing e-mail messages that can be sent from a script including vacation responses, notifications and redirects. Defaults to 3.
  • sieve-protected-headers: List of protected headers that cannot be deleted or added using the editheader extension. Defaults to Original-Subject Original-From Received Auto-Submitted.
  • sieve-default-vacation-expiry: Default expire time in seconds of a vacation entry. Defaults to 2592000 (30 days).
  • sieve-default-duplicate-expiry: Default expire time in seconds of a duplicate entry. Defaults to 604800 (7 days).
  • sieve-notification-uris: List of supported URIs (separated by spaces) by the enotify extension. Defaults to mailto.
  • sieve-vacation-default-subject: Default subject of vacation responses. Defaults to Automated reply.
  • sieve-vacation-subject-prefix: Default subject prefix of vacation responses. Defaults to Auto: .

Conformed RFCs

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