procmailex

PROCMAILEX(5)                 File Formats Manual                PROCMAILEX(5)

NAME
       procmailex - procmail rcfile examples

SYNOPSIS
       $HOME/.procmailrc examples

DESCRIPTION
       For a description of the rcfile format see procmailrc(5).

       The  weighted  scoring  technique  is  described in detail in the proc-
       mailsc(5) man page.

       This man page shows several example recipes.  For examples of  complete
       rcfiles  you can check the NOTES section in procmail(1), or look at the
       example rcfiles in /usr/share/doc/procmail/examples.

EXAMPLES
       Sort out all mail coming from the  scuba-dive  mailing  list  into  the
       mailfolder scubafile (uses the locallockfile scubafile.lock).

              :0:
              * ^TOscuba
              scubafile

       Forward all mail from peter about compilers to william (and keep a copy
       of it here in petcompil).

              :0
              * ^From.*peter
              * ^Subject:.*compilers
              {
                 :0 c
                 ! william@somewhere.edu

                 :0
                 petcompil
              }

       An equivalent solution that accomplishes the same:

              :0 c
              * ^From.*peter
              * ^Subject:.*compilers
              ! william@somewhere.edu

                 :0 A
                 petcompil

       An equivalent, but slightly slower solution that accomplishes the same:

              :0 c
              * ^From.*peter
              * ^Subject:.*compilers
              ! william@somewhere.edu

              :0
              * ^From.*peter
              * ^Subject:.*compilers
              petcompil

       If you are fairly new to procmail and plan to experiment a  little  bit
       it  often  helps to have a safety net of some sort.  Inserting the fol-
       lowing two recipes above all other recipes will make sure that  of  all
       arriving  mail always the last 32 messages will be preserved.  In order
       for it to work as intended,  you  have  to  create  a  directory  named
       `backup' in $MAILDIR prior to inserting these two recipes.

              :0 c
              backup

              :0 ic
              | cd backup && rm -f dummy `ls -t msg.* | sed -e 1,32d`

       If  your system doesn't generate or generates incorrect leading `From '
       lines on every mail, you can fix this by calling up procmail  with  the
       -f- option.  To fix the same problem by different means, you could have
       inserted the following two recipes above all other recipes in your  rc-
       file.   They  will  filter the header of any mail through formail which
       will strip any leading `From ', and automatically regenerates it subse-
       quently.

              :0 fhw
              | formail -I "From " -a "From "

       Add the headers of all messages that didn't come from the postmaster to
       your private header collection (for statistics or mail debugging);  and
       use  the  lockfile `headc.lock'.  In order to make sure the lockfile is
       not removed until the pipe has finished, you  have  to  specify  option
       `w';  otherwise  the  lockfile would be removed as soon as the pipe has
       accepted the mail.

              :0 hwc:
              * !^FROM_MAILER
              | uncompress headc.Z; cat >>headc; compress headc

       Or, if you would use the more efficient gzip instead of compress:

              :0 hwc:
              * !^FROM_MAILER
              | gzip >>headc.gz

       Forward all mails shorter than 1000 bytes to my home address (no  lock-
       file needed on this recipe).

              :0
              * < 1000
              ! myname@home

       Split  up incoming digests from the surfing mailing list into their in-
       dividual messages, and store them into surfing, using  surfing.lock  as
       the locallockfile.

              :0:
              * ^Subject:.*surfing.*Digest
              | formail +1 -ds >>surfing

       Store  everything  coming  from  the  postmaster or mailer-daemon (like
       bounced mail) into the file postm, using postm.lock as  the  locallock-
       file.

              :0:
              * ^FROM_MAILER
              postm

       A  simple  autoreply  recipe.  It makes sure that neither mail from any
       daemon (like bouncing mail or mail from mailing-lists), nor autoreplies
       coming  from yourself will be autoreplied to.  If this precaution would
       not be taken, disaster could result (`ringing'  mail).   In  order  for
       this recipe to autoreply to all the incoming mail, you should of course
       insert it before all other recipes in your rcfile.  However, it is  ad-
       visable  to  put  it after any recipes that process the mails from sub-
       scribed mailinglists; it generally is not a good idea to  generate  au-
       toreplies to mailinglists (yes, the !^FROM_DAEMON regexp should already
       catch those, but if the mailinglist  doesn't  follow  accepted  conven-
       tions, this might not be enough).

              :0 h c
              * !^FROM_DAEMON
              * !^X-Loop: your@own.mail.address
              | (formail -r -I"Precedence: junk" \
                  -A"X-Loop: your@own.mail.address" ; \
                 echo "Mail received.") | $SENDMAIL -t

       A  more  complicated  autoreply  recipe  that implements the functional
       equivalent of the well known vacation(1) program.  This recipe is based
       on  the  same  principles as the last one (prevent `ringing' mail).  In
       addition to that however, it maintains a vacation database by  extract-
       ing  the name of the sender and inserting it in the vacation.cache file
       if the name was new (the vacation.cache file is maintained  by  formail
       which will make sure that it always contains the most recent names, the
       size of the file is limited to a maximum of approximately 8192  bytes).
       If the name was new, an autoreply will be sent.

       As  you  can  see, the following recipe has comments between the condi-
       tions.  This is allowed.  Do not put comments on the  same  line  as  a
       condition though.

              SHELL=/bin/sh    # for other shells, this might need adjustment

              :0 Whc: vacation.lock
               # Perform a quick check to see if the mail was addressed to us
              * $^To:.*\<$\LOGNAME\>
               # Don't reply to daemons and mailinglists
              * !^FROM_DAEMON
               # Mail loops are evil
              * !^X-Loop: your@own.mail.address
              | formail -rD 8192 vacation.cache

                :0 ehc         # if the name was not in the cache
                | (formail -rI"Precedence: junk" \
                     -A"X-Loop: your@own.mail.address" ; \
                   echo "I received your mail,"; \
                   echo "but I won't be back until Monday."; \
                   echo "-- "; cat $HOME/.signature \
                  ) | $SENDMAIL -oi -t

       Store  all  messages concerning TeX in separate, unique filenames, in a
       directory named texmail (this directory has to exist); there is no need
       to use lockfiles in this case, so we won't.

              :0
              * (^TO|^Subject:.*)TeX[^t]
              texmail

       The  same as above, except now we store the mails in numbered files (MH
       mail folder).

              :0
              * (^TO|^Subject:.*)TeX[^t]
              texmail/.

       Or you could file the mail in several directory  folders  at  the  same
       time.  The following recipe will deliver the mail to two MH-folders and
       one directory folder.  It is actually only  one  file  with  two  extra
       hardlinks.

              :0
              * (^TO|^Subject:.*)TeX[^t]
              texmail/. wordprocessing dtp/.

       Store  all  the messages about meetings in a folder that is in a direc-
       tory that changes every month.  E.g.  if  it  were  January  1994,  the
       folder  would have the name `94-01/meeting' and the locallockfile would
       be `94-01/meeting.lock'.

              :0:
              * meeting
              `date +%y-%m`/meeting

       The same as above, but, if the `94-01' directory wouldn't have existed,
       it is created automatically:

              MONTHFOLDER=`date +%y-%m`

              :0 Wic
              * ? test ! -d $MONTHFOLDER
              | mkdir $MONTHFOLDER

              :0:
              * meeting
              ${MONTHFOLDER}/meeting

       The same as above, but now by slightly different means:

              MONTHFOLDER=`date +%y-%m`
              DUMMY=`test -d $MONTHFOLDER || mkdir $MONTHFOLDER`

              :0:
              * meeting
              ${MONTHFOLDER}/meeting

       If  you are subscribed to several mailinglists and people cross-post to
       some of them, you usually receive several duplicate mails (one from ev-
       ery list).  The following simple recipe eliminates duplicate mails.  It
       tells formail to keep an 8KB cache file in which it will store the Mes-
       sage-IDs  of the most recent mails you received.  Since Message-IDs are
       guaranteed to be unique for every new mail, they are ideally suited  to
       weed  out  duplicate mails.  Simply put the following recipe at the top
       of your rcfile, and no duplicate mail will get past it.

              :0 Wh: msgid.lock
              | formail -D 8192 msgid.cache

       Beware if you have delivery problems in  recipes  below  this  one  and
       procmail  tries  to  requeue the mail, then on the next queue run, this
       mail will be considered a duplicate and will be thrown away.  For those
       not quite so confident in their own scripting capabilities, you can use
       the following recipe instead.  It puts duplicates in a separate  folder
       instead  of  throwing them away.  It is up to you to periodically empty
       the folder of course.

              :0 Whc: msgid.lock
              | formail -D 8192 msgid.cache

              :0 a:
              duplicates

       Procmail can deliver to MH folders directly, but, it  does  not  update
       the  unseen sequences the real MH manages.  If you want procmail to up-
       date those as well, use a recipe like the following which will file ev-
       erything that contains the word spam in the body of the mail into an MH
       folder called spamfold.  Note the local lockfile, which is  needed  be-
       cause MH programs do not lock the sequences file.  Asynchronous invoca-
       tions of MH programs that change the sequences file may therefore  cor-
       rupt  it or silently lose changes.  Unfortunately, the lockfile doesn't
       completely solve the problem as rcvstore could be invoked while  `show'
       or  `mark'  or  some  other MH program is running.  This problem is ex-
       pected to be fixed in some future version of MH, but until then, you'll
       have to balance the risk of lost or corrupt sequences against the bene-
       fits of the unseen sequence.

              :0 :spamfold/$LOCKEXT
              * B ?? spam
              | rcvstore +spamfold

       When delivering to emacs folders  (i.e.,  mailfolders  managed  by  any
       emacs  mail package, e.g., RMAIL or VM) directly, you should use emacs-
       compatible lockfiles.  The emacs mailers are a bit braindamaged in that
       respect,  they  get very upset if someone delivers to mailfolders which
       they already have in their internal buffers.  The following recipe  as-
       sumes that $HOME equals /home/john.

              MAILDIR=Mail

              :0:/usr/local/lib/emacs/lock/!home!john!Mail!mailbox
              * ^Subject:.*whatever
              mailbox

       Alternatively,  you can have procmail deliver into its own set of mail-
       boxes, which you then periodically empty and copy over  to  your  emacs
       files  using  movemail.  Movemail uses mailbox.lock local lockfiles per
       mailbox.  This actually is the preferred mode of operation in  conjunc-
       tion with procmail.

       To  extract  certain  headers from a mail and put them into environment
       variables you can use any of the following constructs:

              SUBJECT=`formail -xSubject:`    # regular field
              FROM=`formail -rt -xTo:`        # special case

              :0 h                            # alternate method
              KEYWORDS=| formail -xKeywords:

       If you are using temporary files in a procmailrc file, and want to make
       sure  that  they  are removed just before procmail exits, you could use
       something along the lines of:

              TEMPORARY=$HOME/tmp/pmail.$$
              TRAP="/bin/rm -f $TEMPORARY"

       The TRAP keyword can also be used to change the exitcode  of  procmail.
       I.e.  if  you want procmail to return an exitcode of `1' instead of its
       regular exitcodes, you could use:

              EXITCODE=""
              TRAP="exit 1;"   # The trailing semi-colon is important
                               # since exit is not a standalone program

       Or, if the exitcode does not need to depend on the  programs  run  from
       the TRAP, you can use a mere:

              EXITCODE=1

       The following recipe prints every incoming mail that looks like a post-
       script file.

              :0 Bb
              * ^^%!
              | lpr

       The following recipe does the same, but is a bit  more  selective.   It
       only prints the postscript file if it comes from the print-server.  The
       first condition matches only if it is found in the header.  The  second
       condition only matches at the start of the body.

              :0 b
              * ^From[ :].*print-server
              * B ?? ^^%!
              | lpr

       The same as above, but now by slightly different means:

              :0
              * ^From[ :].*print-server
              {
                :0 B b
                * ^^%!
                | lpr
              }

       Likewise:

              :0 HB b
              * ^^(.+$)*From[ :].*print-server
              * ^^(.+$)*^%!
              | lpr

       Suppose  you  have  two  accounts, you use both accounts regularly, but
       they are in very distinct places (i.e., you can only read mail that ar-
       rived  at  either one of the accounts).  You would like to forward mail
       arriving at account one to account two, and the other way around.   The
       first  thing  that comes to mind is using .forward files at both sites;
       this won't work of course, since you will  be  creating  a  mail  loop.
       This  mail  loop  can  be  avoided by inserting the following recipe in
       front of all other recipes  in  the  $HOME/.procmailrc  files  on  both
       sites.   If  you  make sure that you add the same X-Loop: field at both
       sites, mail can now safely be forwarded to the other account  from  ei-
       ther of them.

              :0 c
              * !^X-Loop: yourname@your.main.mail.address
              | formail -A "X-Loop: yourname@your.main.mail.address" | \
                 $SENDMAIL -oi yourname@the.other.account

       If  someone  sends  you a mail with the word `retrieve' in the subject,
       the following will automatically send back the contents of info_file to
       the  sender.   Like in all recipes where we send mail, we watch out for
       mail loops.

              :0
              * !^From +YOUR_USERNAME
              * !^Subject:.*Re:
              * !^FROM_DAEMON
              * ^Subject:.*retrieve
              | (formail -r ; cat info_file) | $SENDMAIL -oi -t

       Now follows an example for a very simple fileserver accessible by mail.
       For more demanding applications, I suggest you take a look at SmartList
       (available from the same  place  as  the  procmail  distribution).   As
       listed, this fileserver sends back at most one file per request, it ig-
       nores the body of incoming mails, the Subject: line has  to  look  like
       "Subject: send file the_file_you_want" (the blanks are significant), it
       does not return files that have names starting with a dot, nor does  it
       allow  files  to be retrieved that are outside the fileserver directory
       tree (if you decide to munge this example, make sure you do  not  inad-
       vertently loosen this last restriction).

              :0
              * ^Subject: send file [0-9a-z]
              * !^X-Loop: yourname@your.main.mail.address
              * !^Subject:.*Re:
              * !^FROM_DAEMON
              * !^Subject: send file .*[/.]\.
              {
                MAILDIR=$HOME/fileserver # chdir to the fileserver directory

                :0 fhw                   # reverse mailheader and extract name
                * ^Subject: send file \/[^ ]*
                | formail -rA "X-Loop: yourname@your.main.mail.address"

                FILE="$MATCH"            # the requested filename

                :0 ah
                | cat - ./$FILE 2>&1 | $SENDMAIL -oi -t
              }

       The  following example preconverts all plain-text mail arriving in cer-
       tain encoded MIME formats into a more compact 8-bit format which can be
       used and displayed more easily by most programs.  The mimencode(1) pro-
       gram is part of Nathaniel Borenstein's metamail package.

              :0
              * ^Content-Type: *text/plain
              {
                :0 fbw
                * ^Content-Transfer-Encoding: *quoted-printable
                | mimencode -u -q

                   :0 Afhw
                   | formail -I "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit"

                :0 fbw
                * ^Content-Transfer-Encoding: *base64
                | mimencode -u -b

                   :0 Afhw
                   | formail -I "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit"
              }

       The following one is rather exotic, but it only serves to demonstrate a
       feature.   Suppose  you have a file in your HOME directory called ".ur-
       gent", and the (one) person named in that file is the sender of an  in-
       coming  mail,  you'd like that mail to be stored in $MAILDIR/urgent in-
       stead of in any of the normal mailfolders it would have been sorted in.
       Then this is what you could do (beware, the filelength of $HOME/.urgent
       should be well below $LINEBUF, increase LINEBUF if necessary):

              URGMATCH=`cat $HOME/.urgent`

              :0:
              * $^From.*${URGMATCH}
              urgent

       An entirely different application for procmail would be  to  condition-
       ally apply filters to a certain (outgoing) text or mail.  A typical ex-
       ample would be a filter through which you pipe all  outgoing  mail,  in
       order to make sure that it will be MIME encoded only if it needs to be.
       I.e. in this case you could start procmail in  the  middle  of  a  pipe
       like:

              cat newtext | procmail ./mimeconvert | mail chris@where.ever

       The  mimeconvert  rcfile  could  contain something like (the =0x80= and
       =0xff= should be substituted with the real 8-bit characters):

              DEFAULT=|     # pipe to stdout instead of
                            # delivering mail as usual
              :0 Bfbw
              * [=0x80=-=0xff=]
              | mimencode -q

                :0 Afhw
                | formail -I 'MIME-Version: 1.0' \
                   -I 'Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1' \
                   -I 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable'

SEE ALSO
       procmail(1), procmailrc(5), procmailsc(5), sh(1), csh(1), mail(1),
       mailx(1), uucp(1), aliases(5), sendmail(8), egrep(1), grep(1), biff(1),
       comsat(8), mimencode(1), lockfile(1), formail(1)

AUTHORS
       Stephen R. van den Berg
              <srb@cuci.nl>
       Philip A. Guenther
              <guenther@sendmail.com>

BuGless                           2001/08/04                     PROCMAILEX(5)
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