Bugzilla 5.2 email_in.pl documentation

[Jeffrey Fearn]

On 7/3/2026 5:22 AM, David Miller via developers wrote:
> Thanks!  The documentation is at https://github.com/bugzilla/bugzilla/ 
> tree/5.2/docs/en/rst
> 
> (or at docs/en/rst within your checked out copy)
> 
> RST is "Restructured Text" and it's fairly similar to Markdown (which 
> github uses in comments and a lot of wikis use), though the syntax is a 
> little different.
> 
> Long term I think it'll be way easier to set up if we let Bugzilla log 
> into an IMAP account on a cron job and retrieve messages rather than 
> trying to pipe them through Postfix. But until then, better docs for the 
> Postfix forwarding method would definitely be appreciated.
> 
> If you can't figure out RST, you can always just write up a general doc 
> with the instructions and post it here or something and one of us can 
> reformat it into RST to get it into the tree.
> 
> On 3/4/26 12:02 PM, Jona Müller via developers wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> please correct me if this is not the correct place to post this.
>>
>> I've been maintaining bugzilla installations for over 10 years and 
>> always been
>> very happy with it, never causes problems. We are using one internally 
>> more like
>> a ticket system and not a bug tracker.
>>
>> For quite some time I've known that at least sometime in the past it was
>> possible to file bugs via email but only recently got to actually 
>> setting it up.
>>
>> Really wasn't straightforward but I got it working with postfix piping to
>> email_in.pl via .forward of a dedicated bugzilla system user.
>>
>> There is only very limited information on this to be found and it also is
>> completely absent from any current documentation.
>>
>> I would be happy to contribute documentation on how to set it up.
There are some docs on the email_in script itself, not easy to find or 
detailed though.

https://bugzilla.readthedocs.io/en/5.2/integrating/api/email_in.html

A problem with mail in is that it's insecure as it has no authentication.

IMO making an email client is a sub-optimal solution. SMTP ingress is 
reasonably easy to set up and is the sane way of doing this.

We use exim for this, it basically has 2 bz specific settings .... just 
in case someone wants to use or document it ;)

A route:

       to_bz:
         driver = accept
         domains = +local_domains
         transport = to_bz
         no_more

A transport:

       to_bz:
         driver      = pipe
         command     = /var/www/html/bugzilla/email_in.pl

This is a dedicated service, you might need more settings if your mail 
ingress handles multiple services.

We carry a GPG patch for email_in.pl in case anyone wants it. You have 
to set your public key in your profile before you can use the mail_in 
facility.

Cheers, Jeff.