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What I'd like to do is set up an address like [email protected] which will take whatever email it gets and run the full message as STDIN into a shell script. I can't seem to get this working though. Tried a couple solutions, including this one:

How can I route some emails to a script in Postfix?

But my setup is a bit different. I've got the Postfix/Dovecot/MySQL setup, so all email is handled by Dovecot, and Postfix reads its maps from MySQL. Whatever I add to master.cf doesn't seem to work. SpamAssassin has a line in there and that's working fine. I'm stuck!

EDIT: I really wish people would read carefully before downvoting my question. I am using MySQL for my alias maps, so /etc/aliases does not work, I already tried that of course.

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5 Answers 5

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Obviously will work Douglas Land's answer, with a little addition.
Suppose you have only localhost.localdomain at $mydestination in main.cf.
Then add a virtual alias :

[email protected] -> [email protected]

In main.cf you will need:

alias_maps=hash:/etc/aliases

Then add to /etc/aliases :

somelocaluser: "|/your/script/here"

newaliases+postfix reload and you are good to go.

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  • Doesn't work. I set up a virtual alias [email protected] to point to [email protected] and tried foo@localhost too. It bounces back to me instead of going to the script.
    – CaptSaltyJack
    May 13, 2013 at 19:15
  • Also, mydestination is blank, and main.cf recommends leaving it blank otherwise it can cause problems. If I set mydestination to my host, I get a warning in the mail.log: warning: do not list domain blahblah.com in BOTH mydestination and virtual_mailbox_domains
    – CaptSaltyJack
    May 13, 2013 at 19:16
  • Well add localhost.localdomain to mydestination. don't add the main domain.
    – Sandor Marton
    May 13, 2013 at 21:01
  • Still doesn't work.
    – CaptSaltyJack
    May 13, 2013 at 21:29
  • Logs? I have same config in multiple places, should work.
    – Sandor Marton
    May 13, 2013 at 22:11
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I'd go with Procmail. We use this to parse all sorts of mail out to worker scripts and IRC bots for notifications.

Here is an example of how to handle email. http://linuxgazette.net/issue14/procmail.html

Relevant short example done here for ease:

  1. Create a local user called handler, for example.

  2. Go to handler's home directory and create a file called .procmailrc containing:

:0
| $HOME/bin/my.script

This will pass the entire inbound email to the script $HOME/bin/my.script through STDIN.

Also here is where I got help with Procmail when I was first trying to pass email to a script: How to use procmail to get a message into a variable

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  • Link was inline with the text. I've expanded my answer though for ease.
    – SimonJGreen
    May 13, 2013 at 21:32
  • This doesn't work. Like I said.. local mail delivery is not enabled on this system. This server is purely driven by Dovecot+MySQL for mailbox & alias management. Local user accounts do not register as being able to receive mail just because they exist.
    – CaptSaltyJack
    May 13, 2013 at 21:44
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You can pipe an entry to a script via /etc/aliases, RE:

foo: "|/your/script/here"

modify /etc/aliases then run newaliases and reload the postfix process.

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I would check if sieve supports piping to a script. Dovecot supports sieve scripts.

As alternative you can use "procmail" as MDA between postfix an dovecot. Procmail can pipe to a script.

(that said I wonder why Douglas Land's answer does not work, mysql as backend should not make a different?!)"

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  • Simple. In the default setup of postfix, in /etc/main.cf, alias_maps is pointing to hash:/etc/aliases. In my main.cf, that line is gone, replaced with virtual_alias_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql_virtual_alias_maps.cf, mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql_virtual_alias_domainaliases_maps.cf. All aliases are handled via a mysql query. I tried using pipe in the DB too, and that didn't work.
    – CaptSaltyJack
    May 11, 2013 at 21:14
  • aliase_maps and virtual_maps are two different things. You should read "man aliases" and "man virtual"
    – Tim Haegele
    May 12, 2013 at 19:10
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Something that hasn't been mentioned is that you can use more than one lookup table (separated by comma or space):

virtual_alias_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual.cf
alias_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-aliases.cf hash:/etc/aliases

The first one (virtual_alias_maps), will search for an email and return a username (for example: [email protected] -> info1234).

Then, the second one (alias_maps) will search for a username in your database, if not found, will search it at /etc/aliases. This way, you can still manage your aliases in MySQL and set your scripts in /etc/aliases, and no need to append "@localhost.localdomain" to the local users.

To test if your setup is correct, use:

postmap -q [email protected] mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual.cf
postmap -q info1234 mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-aliases.cf hash:/etc/aliases

Using Local accounts with aliases in MySQL:

In one of my custom setups, I'm using local accounts for users and MySQL for aliases only. So this is how I set it:

virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/vusers
smtpd_sender_login_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/vusers
virtual_alias_domains = /etc/postfix/vhosts
alias_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-aliases.cf hash:/etc/aliases

As you can see, feel free to mix them anyway you want.

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