DOKK / manpages / debian 13 / dovecot-core / doveadm-save.1.en
DOVEADM-SAVE(1) Dovecot DOVEADM-SAVE(1)

doveadm-save - Save email to a user's mailbox

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] save [-S socket_path] -A [-m mailbox] [-U uid] [-g guid] [-r received-date] [mail-file]

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] save [-S socket_path] -F file [-m mailbox] [-U uid] [-g guid] [-r received-date] [mail-file]

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] save [-S socket_path] --no-userdb-lookup [-m mailbox] [-U uid] [-g guid] [-r received-date] [mail-file]

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] save [-S socket_path] -u user [-m mailbox] [-U uid] [-g guid] [-r received-date] [mail-file]

doveadm save can be used to save messages. This can be useful for scripts and for debugging. Sieve is not invoked for saved messages, but quota is enforced.

Global doveadm(1)

-D

Enables verbosity and debug messages.

-O

Do not read any config file, just use defaults. The dovecot_storage_version setting defaults to the latest version, but can be overridden with

-k

Preserve entire environment for doveadm, not just import_environment setting.

-v

Enables verbosity, including progress counter.

-i instance-name

If using multiple Dovecot instances, choose the config file based on this instance name.

See instance_name setting for more information.

-c config-file

Read configuration from the given config-file. By default it first reads config socket, and then falls back to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. You can also point this to config socket of some instance running compatible version.

-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.

-A

If the -A option is present, the command will be performed for all users. Using this option in combination with system users from userdb { driver = passwd } is not recommended, because it contains also users with a lower UID than the one configured with the first_valid_uid setting.

When the SQL userdb module is used, make sure that the userdb_sql_iterate_query setting setting matches your database layout.

When using the LDAP userdb module, make sure that the userdb_fields setting and userdb_ldap_iterate_fields setting settings match your LDAP schema. Otherwise doveadm(1) will be unable to iterate over all users.

-F file

Execute the command for all the users in the file. This is similar to the -A option, but instead of getting the list of users from the userdb, they are read from the given file. The file contains one username per line.

--no-userdb-lookup

Do not perform userdb lookup. Use the USER environment variable to specify the username.

-S socket_path

The option's argument is either an absolute path to a local UNIX domain socket, or a hostname and port (hostname:port), in order to connect a remote host via a TCP socket.

This allows an administrator to execute doveadm(1) mail commands through the given socket.

-u user/mask

Run the command only for the given user. It's also possible to use '*' and '?' wildcards (e.g. -u *@example.org).

-m mailbox

Store mail to specified mailbox instead of INBOX.

-U uid

Save the mail using the given UID, if possible.

-g guid

Save the mail using the given GUID.

-r received-date

Save the mail using the given received-date timestamp. This is in the "human timestamp" format as described by doveadm-search-query(7).

mail-file

The message data to save.

  • If mail-file is -, the message is read from stdin (default).
  • Otherwise, mail-file resolves as a file path.

echo "hello, world" | doveadm save -u testuser@testdomain

Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List ⟨dovecot@dovecot.org⟩. Information about reporting bugs is available at: https://dovecot.org/bugreport.html

doveadm(1)

March 2025 78ffb79