Actual mailboxes + catch-all for all other addresses

[jason-smith80]

I set up 3 mailboxes:

% setup email add john@example.com
% setup email add frank@example.com
% setup email add paul@example.com

And added a catch-all to John's mailbox:

% setup alias add @example.com john@example.com

However, this results in ALL mail ending up in John's mailbox (including Frank's and Paul's mail). Going by this post, I must also add aliases for all the actual mailboxes too because aliases take precedence over accounts. However, DMS is not letting me:

% setup alias add john@example.com john@example.com
ERROR addalias: 'john@example.com' is already defined as an account
ERROR addalias: Aborting

So I ended up editing the config/postfix-virtual.cf file directly:

% vim config/postfix-virtual.cf
john@example.com john@example.com
frank@example.com frank@example.com
paul@example.com paul@example.com
@example.com john@example.com

I have tested this configuration and it seems to work correctly.

Is this an unsupported use-case, of could I have achieved the same using DMS setup commands?

[polarathene]

I must also add aliases for all the actual mailboxes too because aliases take precedence over accounts.

Correct. This is something Postfix does which we cannot control.

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However, DMS is not letting me

It's intentionally prevented due to issues reported in the past related to the conflicting use of an address by both mailbox and alias.

We have an open issue about this I think, notably for the catch-all use-case where we advise manually managing via postfix-virtual.cf as a workaround when you know what you're doing and we'll allow that as you've discovered.

A recent issue someone ran into with a catch-all was it broke subaddressing for use with Dovecot sieve, to make that work consistently, the solution was to use regexp aliases which are less pleasant to manage (@audioscavenger you might be interested in knowing about this caveat/workaround for your management GUI).

For more info on the sub-address resolution queries by Postfix see:

• https://github.com/orgs/docker-mailserver/discussions/4574#discussioncomment-14561531
• https://github.com/orgs/docker-mailserver/discussions/4574#discussioncomment-14568511

There was also this alternative solution I provided that avoided the regexp aliases (but still required the equivalent postfix-virtual.cf workaround), however that was more specific to preserving the original recipient address for the sieve script.

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Is this an unsupported use-case, of could I have achieved the same using DMS setup commands?

It is unsupported. You may subscribe to this issue to be updated should it be resolved in future.

[jason-smith80]

we advise manually managing via postfix-virtual.cf as a workaround when you know what you're doing and we'll allow that as you've discovered.

Clear! I'll keep doing it that way.

Thanks!