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Affected version(s): all

Problem

You installed the package open-xchange-mailfilter but you are unable to set up mailfilters within the GUI.

Root Cause

The Open-Xchange server needs an IMAP server with a working SIEVE implementation like dovecot or cyrus in order to properly support mailfilter rules. SIEVE usually runs on port 2000 or 4910 on your mail server. Recent Open-Xchange installations are configured to connect to SIEVE on port 4190 of the mail server by default.

Solution

Check the port and the hostname/IP address in /opt/open-xchange/etc/mailfilter.properties

SIEVE_SERVER=localhost
SIEVE_PORT=4190

These settings have to match the port and the IP address of the running IMAP server. This can be checked with 'netstat' on the IMAP server:

netstat -tunap | grep -e 2000 -e 4190
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:4190 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1244/cyrmaster

The example above shows that the installation of cyrus IMAP only allows access to SIEVE from localhost (127.0.0.1). If the IMAP server is located on a different system than the Open-Xchange installation, then you have to change 'localhost' to the corresponding IP address of the interface where the IMAP server should listen on in your IMAP configuration.

You can check if the configuration was successful by accessing the server with 'telnet' from another system:

telnet 192.168.242.128 4190
Trying 192.168.242.128...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

In this case the connection to SIEVE was refused, check the port and the interface settings as explained above.
This is how it should look like if the configuration was successful and you can reach SIEVE:

telnet 192.168.242.128 4190
Trying 192.168.242.128...
Connected to 192.168.242.128.
Escape character is '^]'.
"IMPLEMENTATION" "Cyrus timsieved v2.2.13-Debian-2.2.13-19+squeeze3"
"SASL" "PLAIN"
"SIEVE" "fileinto reject envelope vacation imapflags notify subaddress
relational comparator-i;ascii-numeric regex"
OK

Note: some IMAP servers like courier do not support SIEVE while others like dovecot needs to be configured to use it. Please check the documentation of the IMAP software you are using.

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