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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 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   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 pet‐
       compil).

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

                 :0
                 petcompil
              }

       An equivalent solution that accomplishes the same:

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

                 :0 A
                 petcompil

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

              :0 c
              * ^From.*peter
              * ^Subject:.*compilers
              ! william AT 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 pre‐
       served.  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  prob‐
       lem  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 automatically 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 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 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 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 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 mailinglists; 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 AT own.address
              | (formail -r -I"Precedence: junk" \
                  -A"X-Loop: your AT own.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  extracting  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  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 AT own.address
              | formail -rD 8192 vacation.cache

                :0 ehc         # if the name was not in the cache
                | (formail -rI"Precedence: junk" \
                     -A"X-Loop: your AT own.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 tex‐
       mail (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 directory 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 every list).  The following simple
       recipe eliminates duplicate mails.  It tells formail to keep an 8KB cache file in which it
       will  store  the Message-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  capabili‐
       ties,  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 update those as well, use a recipe like  the
       following  which  will file everything that contains 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.   Unfortu‐
       nately,  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 version 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 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  mail‐
       folders  which  they already have in their internal buffers.  The following 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 mail‐
       box.lock local lockfiles per mailbox.  This actually 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 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 postscript file.

              :0 Bb
              * ^^%!
              | lpr

       The following recipe does the same, but is a bit more selective.  It only prints the post‐
       script 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 dis‐
       tinct 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 AT your.address
              | formail -A "X-Loop: yourname AT your.address" | \
                 $SENDMAIL -oi yourname AT the.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 demand‐
       ing 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  "Sub‐
       ject:  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 out‐
       side  the fileserver directory tree (if you decide to munge this example, make sure you do
       not inadvertently loosen this last restriction).

              :0
              * ^Subject: send file [0-9a-z]
              * !^X-Loop: yourname AT your.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 AT your.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 compact 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  pack‐
       age.

              :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):

              URGMATCH=`cat $HOME/.urgent`

              :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 AT where.ever

       The  mimeconvert rcfile could contain something like (the =0x80= and =0xff= should be sub‐
       stituted 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 AT cuci.nl>
       Philip A. Guenther
              <guenther AT sendmail.com>



BuGless                                     2001/08/04                              PROCMAILEX(5)


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