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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!uuneo.neosoft.com!not-for-mail From: conrads@neosoft.com (Conrad Sabatier) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: .forward file format Date: 26 Oct 1996 22:10:11 GMT Organization: What? Me, organize? Lines: 105 Message-ID: <54u283$729@uuneo.neosoft.com> References: <54olal$h5u@uuneo.neosoft.com> <54rote$bsc@nntp.Stanford.EDU> <54s8l5$bqs@uuneo.neosoft.com> <54tmud$k8g@nntp.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: conrads@neosoft.com (Conrad Sabatier) NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.27.165.170 In article <54tmud$k8g@nntp.Stanford.EDU>, Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> wrote: >Conrad Sabatier (conrads@neosoft.com) wrote: >: In article <54rote$bsc@nntp.Stanford.EDU>, >: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> wrote: >: >Annelise Anderson (andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu) wrote: >: >: Conrad Sabatier (conrads@neosoft.com) wrote: >: > >: >: : Could it be because I'm using popclient to retrieve my mail from my ISP's >: >: : POP3 server? >: > >: >: Yes, I think so. I get some mail from a POP3 server and it goes >: >: directly into a mail box and never gets processed by procmail. >: >: Other mail comes to the queue, and when I process the queue the mail >: >: is then dealt with by the .forward file; my has >: > >: >: "|IFS=' '&&p=/usr/local/bin/procmail&&test -f $p&&exec $p -Yf-||exit 75 #andrsn" >: > >: >: which looks pretty much like yours. >: > >: >: However, I think you can tell the popserver to put the mail wherever you >: >: want it--you might want to try telling it to put it in /var/spool/mqueue. >: > >: >This won't work--but the man page for procmail says that it will process >: >an already filled (the key word to search for) mailbox. There's a >: >script for doing so that assumes the mail is put in /var/mail/username. >: >So if you run popclient and then the script (extract it from the man >: >page) it will process the mail in accordance with your .procmailrc. > >: Yes...but...*how*??? > >: My shell programming skills leave much to be desired. As I said, running >: procmail manually (the script from man procmail mentioned above) on an >: already-loaded /var/mail/$LOGNAME mailbox works beautifully. > >: OK, so popclient stuffs everything into the /var/mail/$LOGNAME inbox, and >: then I need to run procmail (the script) on it. > >: So how can I automate this process? > >: Or can I pipe popclient's output to sendmail/procmail? > >: Help? Please? > >: I *really* need to get this thing working! The junk mail these days is >: driving me nuts! > >: Many thanks! > >Okay, Conrad, try this: > >1) do man procmail > procmail.txt (in your home directory) >2) open procmail.txt with vi and use :se nu to get line numbers. >Search for filled with /filled to find the script. Export it to >a file with :780,800w procscript, where the numbers 780 and 800 are >the line numbers where the script occurs. chmod 700 procscript >so that procscript is executable. Open procscript with a text >editor and get rid of the white space on any lines farthest to >the left. >3) run popclient with a line something like >popclient -u conrads -p yourpassword -o /var/mail/conrads your/pop/server >4) then run procscript (just type procscript or sh procscript) >If I were doing it I'd make a copy of /var/mail/username first, copy >the contents of another mailbox there, and test it to make sure it >did what I expected. >5) when you're sure this is running create a file, say conmail, >that has two lines: first the popclient line, then just a line with >the word procscript; actually it should have three lines, the first >#!/bin/sh so it knows it's a script. >6) run conmail when you want to get yourmail >7) when this is working put the conmail line in your .login file >8) if you want it to run--both popclient and procscript, which can >now be called with the conmail script--frequently and automatically, >you can either add it to /etc/crontab or create a user crontab with >the crontab command. These two crontab files have different formats >(the user crontab has no column for who runs the script; other than >that they're alike) and live in different places. See crontab(5) >and crontab(8). The line you want in there, along with the stuff >on how often to run it, is /usr/home/conrads/conmail. Back up >/etc/crontab before editing it (this is the easier way to do this). >You might need a file called allow in the directory with the user >crontab if you choose that route; see the man pages for what needs to >be in it. This is what you'd want to do if you have more than one >user on the machine. >9) Keep in mind that while I've run the script we're calling >procscript here, I haven't actually done the rest of it so this >comes without warranty! Just goes to show you, the old adage is true: great minds think alike. :-) I *was* looking for a complicated/arcane way of doing this, until it finally occurred to me just to add a line to invoke the procmail script in my cron job that invokes popclient. I haven't tested it out yet, but it seems that this should be the ticket. Hallelujah! :-) Many thanks to all who responded, by the way. Mucho appreciated! -- Conrad Sabatier | conrads@neosoft.com | Eschew obfuscation. http://www.neosoft.com/~conrads |