DOVEAD-REBUILD

Section: Dovecot (1)
Updated: February 2026
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NAME

dovead-rebuild- Commands related to rebuilding various aspects of mails matching given search query.  

SYNOPSIS

doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] [lB]-f formatter[rB] rebuild <command> [lB]-S socket_path[rB] -A search_query doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] [lB]-f formatter[rB] rebuild <command> [lB]-S socket_path[rB] -F file search_query doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] [lB]-f formatter[rB] rebuild <command> [lB]-S socket_path[rB] -n-userd-lookup search_query doveadm [lB]GLOBAL OPTIONS[rB] [lB]-f formatter[rB] rebuild <command> [lB]-S socket_path[rB] -u user search_query  

DESCRIPTION

 command is used to rebuilds attachment presence. doveadm(1) will print the message's uid for each match.
 options, doveadm(1) will print the fields  In the first form, doveadm(1) will execute the In the second form, the command will be performed for all users listed in the given file. In the third form, the command will be performed for the user contained in the USER environment variable. In the last form, only matching mails of the given user (s) will be rebuilt  

GLOBAL OPTIONS

Global doveadm(1) -D

Enables verbosity and debug messages.

-O

Do not read any config file, just use defaults. The dovecot_storage_version setting defaults to the latest version, but can be overridden with

-k

Preserve entire environment for doveadm, not just import_environment setting.

-v

Enables verbosity, including progress counter.

-i instanc-name

If using multiple Dovecot instances, choose the config file based on this instance name. See instance_name setting for more information.

-c confi-file

Read configuration from the given confi-file. By default it first reads config socket, and then falls back to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. You can also point this to config socket of some instance running compatible version.

-o setting=value

Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf and from the userdb with the given value. In order to override multiple settings, the -o option may be specified multiple times.

-f formatter

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

prints each line with key=value pairs.

json

prints a JSON array of JSON objects.

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.

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

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 userdb_sql_iterate_query setting setting matches your database layout. When using the LDAP userdb module, make sure that the userdb_fields setting and userdb_ldap_iterate_fields setting settings match your LDAP schema. Otherwise doveadm(1) will be unable to iterate over all users.

-F file

Execute the command for all the users in the file. This is similar to the -A option, but instead of getting the list of users from the userdb, they are read from the given file. The file contains one username per line.

-n-userd-lookup

Do not perform userdb lookup. Use the USER environment variable to specify the username.

-S socket_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.

-u user/mask

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

 

ARGUMENTS

search_query

Resets attachment indicator for messages matching this search query. See dovead-searc-query(7) for details.

 

EXAMPLE

Rebuild user bob's attachment status:

doveadm rebuild attachments-u bob ALL

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REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs, including doveconf-n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List ladovecot@dovecot.orgra. Information about reporting bugs is available at: https://dovecot.org/bugreport.html  

SEE ALSO

doveadm(1)

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Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

GLOBAL OPTIONS

OPTIONS

ARGUMENTS

EXAMPLE

REPORTING BUGS

SEE ALSO