I have a mailserver build with Postfix for SMTP and Dovecot for mail storage (with mailboxes stored in MySQL db). One of the users created mailbox with plus sign in its name, like this:
peter+bob@example.com
Dovecot doesn't seem to handle that mailbox name as usual. When i try to lookup that mailbox with doveadm, it fails
# doveadm user peter+bob@example.com
field valueuserdb lookup: user peter+bob@example.com doesn't exist
On the other hand, when i do the lookup with wildcard, it shows this:
# doveadm user 'peter*bob@example.com'
peter+bob@example.com
# doveadm user '*@example.com'
peter@example.com
(...)
peter+bob@example.com
Anyway - the mailbox with the plus sign is unusable, you cannot login to it.
When the mail is send to that mailbox - Postfix treats it like any other, so it forwards it to Dovecot (in my case via LMTP) to mailbox peter+bob@example.com. But Dovecot tries to deliver it to peter@example.com (ignoring everything starting with the plus sign).
It appears that Dovecot is handeling the plus sign like Gmail or other mail servers:
https://notfaq.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/plus-sign-in-email-addresses/ http://gmailblog.blogspot.cz/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html
My question is:
- Does Dovecot realy treating plus the sign in special way like i described or is this some kind of misbehavior? I search the Dovecot documentation and didn't find anything also I didn't find anything useful while searching the net.
- If this is a feature, can it be disabled (so the '+' sign wouldn't be treated specialy)?