Procmail

Infobox Software
name = procmail



caption =
author = Stephen R. van den Berg
developer = Philip A. Guenther
released = December 7, 1990
latest release version = 3.22
latest release date = September 10, 2001
latest preview version =
latest preview date =
operating system = Any Unix-like
platform = Cross-platform
genre = Mail filter
license = GPL or Artistic License
website = http://www.procmail.org/

Procmail is a mail delivery agent (MDA) or mail filter, a program to process incoming emails on a computer, widely used on Unix systems. It is typically invoked from a mail transfer agent (MTA) like Sendmail or Postfix;this makes the mail processing event-driven. The companion-tool formailallows procmail to be used in batch-processing on mail that already is ina user's mailbox.

Common operations carried out with procmail include filtering and sorting of emails into different folders according to keywords in from, to, subject, text of the mail, or sending autoreplies, but more sophisticated operationsare also possible.

A common practice is to let procmail call an external spam filter program, such as SpamAssassin. This method can allow for spam to be filtered or even deleted.

Examples

DROPPRIVS=yes DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/ MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir/ # Pass mail through spamc, the interface to SpamAssassin :0fw
/usr/bin/spamc # Move mail marked as spam to a mailbox named '.Trash/' :0 * ^X-Spam-Level: *** .Trash/ :0 * ^X-Spam-Status: Yes .Trash/

# Move mail from these senders into Lists-Misc # Empty line is required (this uses a DeMorgan's law OR) :0 * ! ^Sender: [e-mail] * ! ^Sender: [e-mail] { }

:0 E: Lists-Misc

Further reading

* Martin McCarthy, "The Procmail Companion", Addison-Wesley, S. 256, November 2001, ISBN 0-201-73790-6

External links

* [http://www.procmail.org/ Official website]
* [http://pm-doc.sourceforge.net/pm-tips.html pm-doc sf.net procmail docs]
* [http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/ procmail quick start guide]
* [http://www.professional.org/procmail/sandbox.html procmail sandbox - various tips]
* [http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/proctips.html timo's procmail tips and recipes]
* [http://www.iki.fi/~era/procmail/ era eriksson's Procmail "mini-FAQ"]
* [http://procmail.markmail.org/ Searchable procmail mailing list archives]