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 procmailsc(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 part of the
       procmail  source  distribution  (procmail*/examples/?proc­
       mailrc).


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  accom­
       plishes the same:

              * ^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 following 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
       rcfile.   They  will filter the header of any mail through
       formail which will strip any leading `From ', and automat­
       ically regenerates it subsequently.

              :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  statis­
       tics   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

       address (no lockfile needed on this recipe).

              :0
              * < 1000
              ! myname@home

       Split  up  incoming  digests from the surfing mailing list
       into their individual messages, and store them into  surf­
       ing, using surfing.lock as the locallockfile.

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

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

              :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 advisable  to  put  it  after  any
       recipes  that  process  the  mails  from  subscribed mail­
       inglists; it generally is not  a  good  idea  to  generate
       autoreplies to mailinglists (yes, the !^FROM_DAEMON regexp
       should already catch those, but if the mailinglist doesn't
       follow accepted conventions, 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)  pro­
       gram.   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 extracting
       the name of the sender  and  inserting  it  in  the  vaca­
       tion.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).


       As  you can see, the following recipe has comments between
       the conditions.  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  num­
       bered 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 actu­
       ally 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 directory that changes every month.  E.g. if it were
       January 1994, the folder would have the name  `94-01/meet­
       ing'  and the locallockfile would be `94-01/meeting.lock'.

              * 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 every list).  The following sim­
       ple 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  fol­
       lowing  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

       not update the unseen sequences the real MH  manages.   If
       you  want  procmail  to update those as well, use a recipe
       like the following which will file  everything  that  con­
       tains  the  word  spam  in the body of the mail into an MH
       folder called spamfold.  Note the local lockfile, which is
       needed because MH programs do not lock the sequences file.
       Asynchronous invocations of MH programs  that  change  the
       sequences  file  may therefore corrupt 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 expected to be fixed in some future ver­
       sion of MH, but until then, you'll  have  to  balance  the
       risk  of lost or corrupt sequences against the benefits of
       the unseen sequence.

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

       When delivering to emacs folders (i.e.,  mailfolders  man­
       aged  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 follow­
       ing recipe assumes 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  mailboxes,  which you then periodically empty and
       copy over to your emacs files  using  movemail.   Movemail
       uses mailbox.lock local lockfiles per mailbox.  This actu­
       ally is the preferred mode  of  operation  in  conjunction
       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

       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 exit­
       code 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 pro­
       grams run from the TRAP, you can use a mere:

              EXITCODE=1

       The following recipe prints every incoming mail that looks
       like a postscript 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

       larly, but they are in very distinct places (i.e., you can
       only   read  mail  that  arrived  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 either 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 acces­
       sible 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
       ignores  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 inadvertently loosen this last restriction).

              * ^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 certain encoded MIME formats into a more  com­
       pact  8-bit  format  which  can be used and displayed more
       easily by most programs.  The mimencode(1) program 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  ".urgent",  and  the (one) person
       named in that file is the  sender  of  an  incoming  mail,
       you'd  like  that  mail  to  be  stored in $MAILDIR/urgent
       instead 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):


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

       An entirely different application for procmail would be to
       conditionally apply filters to a certain  (outgoing)  text
       or  mail.   A  typical  example  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), binmail(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>


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