doveadm-search (1)

doveadm [-Dv] [-f formatter] search [-S socket_path] search_query

doveadm [-Dv] [-f formatter] search [-S socket_path] -Asearch_query

doveadm [-Dv] [-f formatter] search [-S socket_path] -u user search_query

The search command is used to find matching messages. doveadm(1) will print the mailbox's guid and the message's uid for each match.

When used with the -A or -uwildcard options, doveadm(1) will print the fields username, mailbox-guidand uid for each matching message.

In the first form, doveadm(1) will executed the search action with the environment of the logged in system user.

In the second form, the command will be performed for all users.

In the third form, only matching mails of the given user(s) will be searched.

Global doveadm(1) options:

-D

Enables verbosity and debug messages.

-fformatter

Specifies the formatter for formatting the output. Supported formatters are:

flow

prints each line with key=value pairs.

pager

prints each key:value pair on its own line and separates records with form feed character (^L).

tab

prints a table header followed by tab separated value lines.

table

prints a table header followed by adjusted value lines.

-v

Enables verbosity, including progress counter.

This command uses by default the output formatter flow (without the key= prefix).

Command specific options:

-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 iterate_query setting in /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf.ext matches your database layout. When using the LDAP userdb module, make sure that the iterate_attrs and iterate_filter settings in /etc/dovecot/dovecot-ldap.conf.ext match your LDAP schema. Otherwise doveadm(1) will be unable to iterate over all users.

-Ssocket_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.

-uuser/mask

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

When neither the -A option nor -uuser was specified, the command will be executed with the environment of the currently logged in user.

search_query

Show messages matching this search query. See doveadm-search-query(7) for details.

This example demonstrates how to search in user bob's dovecot mailboxes all messages, which contains the word "todo" in the Subject: header.

doveadm search -u bob mailbox dovecot\(rs* subject todo
3a94c928d66ebe4bda04000015811c6a	8
3a94c928d66ebe4bda04000015811c6a	25
3a94c928d66ebe4bda04000015811c6a	45

The search command is mainly useful when used together with doveadm fetch command. For example to save message bodies of all messages from INBOX that have "todo" in subject, use:

doveadm search -u bob mailbox INBOX subject todo |
while read guid uid; do
  doveadm fetch -u bob body mailbox-guid $guid uid $uid > msg.$uid
done

Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List <[email protected]>. Information about reporting bugs is available at: http://dovecot.org/bugreport.html

doveadm(1), doveadm-fetch(1), doveadm-search-query(7)