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From: <[e-mail]> (Jari Aalto+mail.procmail)
Subject: Procmail tips page pointer
Summary: This mail contains pointer to Procmail Tips page
  at http://www.procmail.org/ which answers most of your procmail
  questions about recipes, handling spam, autoreply, calling shell programs
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.answers,news.answers
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Archive-name: mail/procmail/tips-pointer
Posting-Frequency: 2 times a month
Maintainer: Jari Aalto <[e-mail]>
Last-Modified: $Docid: 2002-07-11 Jari Aalto $

Announcement: "Procmail tips page: all you wanted to know about procmail"

    Faq archive is at:

        http://www.faqs.org/faqs/

    The Procmail documentation project is at

        http://pm-doc.sourceforge.net/

    Other procmail documents

        Era's exellent procmail pages (including procmail faq) are at:

            http://www.iki.fi/~era/procmail

        Another exellent email filtering tips and recipes (procmail)
        Page by Prof. Timo Salmi at

            http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/proctips.html

    What is Procmail?

        Procmail is a mail processing utility, which can help you
        filter your mail; sort incoming mail according to sender, Subject
        line, length of message, keywords in the message, etc; implement an
        ftp-by-mail server, and much more. Procmail is also a complete
        drop-in replacement for your MDA. (If this doesn't mean anything to
        you, you don't want to know.)

        Procmail runs under Unix. See Infinite Ink's Mail Filtering and
        Robots page for information about related utilities for various other
        platforms, and competing Unix programs, too (there aren't that many
        of either).

    Description

        The procmail tips page contains collection of procmail recipes,
        instructions, howtos. The document also contains URL pointers to
        the procmail mailing list and sites that fight against Internet
        UBE. You will also find many other interesting subjects that
        discuss about internet email: haeders and RFCs.

        The tips are compiled from the procmail discussion list,
        from comp.mail.misc and from the author's own experiences with
        procmail.

        This document does not teach you basics of procmail; instead you
        have to be familiar with the procmail man pages already before this
        document's tips are useful to you.

Table of contents as of 2002-07-11

       1.0 Document id
           1.1 General
           1.2 What is Procmail?
           1.3 Abbreviations and thanks
           1.4 Version information
           1.5 Document layout and maintenance
              1.5.1 Sending improvements
           1.6 About presented recipes
           1.7 Variables used in recipes
           1.8 About "useless use of cat award"

       2.0 Procmail pointers
           2.1 Where is procmail developed
           2.2 About procmail's Y2K compliance
           2.3 Procmail resources
           2.4 Procmail mode for Emacs
           2.5 Procmail module library project
              2.5.1 Where to get the modules
              2.5.2 Terminology
              2.5.3 Foreword to using modules
              2.5.4 Header file modules
              2.5.5 General modules
              2.5.6 Low-level Date and time handling
              2.5.7 Higher-level Date and time handling
              2.5.8 Forwarding and account modules
              2.5.9 Vacation modules
              2.5.10 Message-id based modules
              2.5.11 Cron modules
              2.5.12 Backup modules
              2.5.13 Confirmation modules
              2.5.14 File Servers
              2.5.15 Mime modules
              2.5.16 Filtering message body or headers
              2.5.17 Miscellaneous modules
              2.5.18 Mailing list modules
           2.6 Procmail code to filter UBE

       3.0 Dry run testing
           3.1 What is dry run testing
           3.2 Why the From field is not okay after dry run
           3.3 Getting default value of a procmail variable

       4.0 Things to remember
           4.1 Get the newest procmail
           4.2 Csh's tilde is not supported
           4.3 Be sure to write the recipe starting right
           4.4 Always set SHELL
              4.4.1 If system has no /bin/sh and you're forced to use csh/tcsh
              4.4.2 Procmail won't work well with SHELL set to csh derivate
           4.5 Check and set PATH
           4.6 Keep the log on all the time
           4.7 Never add a trailing slash for directories
           4.8 Remember what term DELIVERED means
           4.9 Beware putting comment in wrong place
           4.10 Brace placement
           4.11 Local lockfile usage
           4.12 Global lockfile
           4.13 Gee, where do I put all those ! * $ ??
           4.14 Sending automatic reply, use X-loop header
           4.15 Avoid extra shell layer (check command for SHELLMETAS)
           4.16 Think what shell commands you use
           4.17 Using absolute paths when calling a shell program
           4.18 Disabling a recipe temporarily
           4.19 Keep message backup, no matter what
           4.20 Order of the procmail recipes

       5.0 Procmail flags
           5.1 The order of the flags
           5.2 Flag w and recipe with |
           5.3 Flag w, lock file and recipe with |
           5.4 Flag f and w together
           5.5 Flags h and b
           5.6 Flag h and sinking to /dev/null
           5.7 Flag i and pipe flag f
           5.8 Flag r
           5.9 Flag c's background
           5.10 Flag c before nested block forks a child
           5.11 Flag c and understanding possible forking penalty
           5.12 Flags before nested block
           5.13 Flags aAeE tutorial

       6.0 Matching and regexps (regular expressions)
           6.1 Philosophy of abstraction in regexps
           6.2 Matches are not case-sensitive
           6.3 Procmail uses multi line matches
           6.4 Headers are unfolded before matching
           6.5 Improving Space-Tab syndrome
           6.6 Handling exclamation character
           6.7 Rules for generating a character class
           6.8 Matching space at the end of condition
           6.9 Beware leading backslash
           6.10 Correct use of TO Macro
           6.11 Procmail's regexp engine
           6.12 Procmail and egrep differences
           6.13 Understanding procmail's minimal matching (stingy vs. greedy)
           6.14 Explaining \/ and ()\/
           6.15 Explaining  ^^ and ^
           6.16 ANDing traditionally
           6.17 ORing traditionally
           6.18 ORing and score recipe
           6.19 ORing by using De Morgan rules

       7.0 Variables
           7.1 Setting and unsetting variables
           7.2 Variable initialization and sh syntax
           7.3 Testing variables
           7.4 What does $\VAR mean?
           7.5 Common pitfalls when using variables
           7.6 Quoting: Using single or double quotes
           7.7 Quoting: Passing values to an external program
           7.8 Passing values from an external program
           7.9 Incrementing a variable by a value N
           7.10 Comparing values
           7.11 Strings: How many characters are there in a given string?
           7.12 Strings: How to strip trailing newline.
           7.13 Strings: deriving the last N characters of a string.
           7.14 Strings: Getting partial matches from a string.
           7.15 Strings: Procmail string manipulation example
           7.16 How to raise a flag if the message was filed
           7.17 Dollar sign in condition lines.
           7.18 Finding mysterious foo variable
           7.19 Storing code to variable
           7.20 Getting headers into a variable.
           7.21 Converting value to lowercase

       8.0 Suggestions and miscellaneous
           8.1 Speeding up procmail
           8.2 See the procmail installation's examples
           8.3 Printing statistics of your incoming mail
           8.4 Storing UBE mailboxes outside of quota
           8.5 Using first 5-30 lines from the message
           8.6 Using cat or echo in scripts?
           8.7 How to run an extra shell command as a side effect?
           8.8 Forcing "ok" return status from shell script
           8.9 Make your own .procmailrc available to others
           8.10 Using dates efficiently
           8.11 Keep simple header log
           8.12 Gzipping messages
           8.13 Emergency stop for your .procmailrc

       9.0 Scoring
           9.1 Using scores by an example
           9.2 Brief Score tutorial
           9.3 Score's scope
           9.4 Counting length of a string
           9.5 Counting lines in a message (Adding Lines: header)
           9.6 Determining if body is longer than header
           9.7 Matching last Received header
           9.8 How to add Content-Length header
           9.9 Testing message size or number of lines
           9.10 Counting commas with recursive includerc

       10.0 Formail usage
           10.1 Fetching fields with formail -x
           10.2 Always use formail's -rt switch
              10.2.1 For procmail versions prior 3.14
           10.3 Using -rt and rewriting the From address
           10.4 Formail -rt and Resent-From header
           10.5 Quoting the message
           10.6 Without quoting the message
           10.7 How to include headers and body to the reply message
           10.8 Adding text to the beginning of message
           10.9 Adding text to the end of message
           10.10 Adding text before quoted message
           10.11 Adding extra headers from file
           10.12 Splitting digest
           10.13 Mailbox: Splitting to individual files
           10.14 Mailbox: Extracting all From addresses from mailbox
           10.15 Mailbox: Applying procmail recipe on whole mailbox
           10.16 Mailbox: run series of commands for each mail (split mailbox)
           10.17 Option -D and cache
           10.18 Option -D and message-id in the body
           10.19 Reducing formail calls (conditionally adding fields)
           10.20 Formail -A -a options
           10.21 Formail -e -s options

       11.0 Saving mailing list messages
           11.1 Using subroutine pm-jalist.rc to detect mailing lists
           11.2 Using plus addressing [e-mail]
           11.3 Using RFC comment trick for additional information
           11.4 Simple mailing list handling
           11.5 Archiving according to TO
           11.6 Using Return-Path to detect mailing lists

       12.0 Procmail, MIME and HTML
           12.1 Mime Bibliography
           12.2 Mime notes
           12.3 Software to deal with mime or HTML
           12.4 Mime content type application/ms-tnef
           12.5 Trapping HTML mime messages
           12.6 Complaining about HTML messages
           12.7 Converting HTML body to plain text
           12.8 Getting rid of unwanted mime attachments (HTML, vcard)
           12.9 Sending contents of a HTML page in plain text to someone

       13.0 Simple recipe examples
           13.1 Saving: MH folders -- numbered messages
           13.2 Saving: to monthly folders
           13.3 Modifying: Filtering basics
           13.4 Modifying: Squeezing empty lines around message body
           13.5 Modifying: shuffling headers always to same order
           13.6 Service: Auto answerer to empty messages
           13.7 Service: File server -- send file as attachments upon request
           13.8 Service: Ping responder
           13.9 Service: simple vacation with procmail
           13.10 Service: vacation code example
           13.11 Service: Auto-forwarding
           13.12 Service: forward only specific messages
           13.13 Service: Making digests
           13.14 Kill: killing advertisement headers and footers
           13.15 Kill: simple kill file recipe with procmail
           13.16 Kill: duplicate messages
           13.17 Kill: spam filter with simple recipes
           13.18 Kill: (un)subscribe messages
           13.19 Time: Once a day cron-like job
           13.20 Time: Running a recipe at a given time
           13.21 Time: Triggering mail and using cron
           13.22 Decoding: Uudecode
           13.23 Decoding: MIME
           13.24 How to send commands in the message's body
           13.25 Matching two words on a line, but not one
           13.26 How to define personal XX macros?
           13.27 How to change subject by body match
           13.28 How to change Subject according to some other header
           13.29 How to call program with parameters

       14.0 Miscellaneous recipes
           14.1 Matching valid Message-Id header
           14.2 Sending two files in a message
           14.3 Excessive quoting of message
           14.4 Sending message to pager in chunks
           14.5 Playing particular sound when message arrives
           14.6 Combining multiple Original-Cc and Original-To headers
           14.7 Forwarding sensitive messages in encrypted format

       15.0 Procmail and PGP
           15.1 Decrypt pgp messages automatically
           15.2 Getkeys from key server
           15.3 Auto grab incoming pgp keys

       16.0 Includerc usage
           16.1 Using: multiple rc files
           16.2 Using: You can call rc file conditionally
           16.3 Autoloading an rc file
           16.4 Making: naming of the rc file
           16.5 Making: Using name space when saving procmail variables
           16.6 Making: Public and private variables in rc file
           16.7 The rules of thumb for constructing general purpose rc file
           16.8 An includerc skeleton

       17.0 Mailing list server

       18.0 Common troubles
           18.1 Procmail modes: normal, delivery, and mail filter.
           18.2 Procmail as sendmail Mlocal mail filtering device
           18.3 Procmail doesn't pass 8bit characters
           18.4 My ISP isn't very interested in installing procmail
           18.5 My ISP has systemwide procmailrc; is this a good idea?
           18.6 Procmail changes mailbox and directory permissions
           18.7 Changing mbox permission during compilation to 660
           18.8 The .forward file must be real file
           18.9 Using .forward if procmail already is LDA
           18.10 Mail should be put in the mailqueue if write fails
           18.11 Qmail: how to make it work with procmail
           18.12 Qmail: Procmail looks file from /var/spool/mail only
           18.13 Qmail: patch to procmail 3.11pre7 to work with Maildirs
           18.14 AFS: How to use Procmail when HOME is in AFS cell
           18.15 Help, some idiot sent my address to 30 mailing lists
           18.16 Help, Procmail beeps and prints to my console
           18.17 Help, procmail dumps mail to console
           18.18 Help, corrupted From_ line in mailbox
           18.19 Directing user's mail to HOME instead of /var/spool/
           18.20 NFS mounting /var/mail is a good way to get bad performance
           18.21 I can't see the sendmail's response in LOGFILE
           18.22 Compiling procmail and choosing locking scheme
           18.23 Forwarding lot of mail causes heavy load
           18.24 What happens to mail if MDA Procmail fails
           18.25 Procmail reads entire 90Mb message into memory
           18.26 Help, procmail uses occasionally huge chunk of memory
           18.27 Procmail signaled out of memory in my verbose log
           18.28 Variables DEFAULT and ORGMAIL
           18.29 When DEFAULT cannot be mailed to
           18.30 Variable DROPPRIVS
           18.31 Variable HOME
           18.32 Variable HOST
           18.33 Variable LINEBUF
           18.34 Variable LOG and LOGFILE
           18.35 Variable TRAP
           18.36 Variable UMASK
           18.37 UMASK and permissions
           18.38 Performance difference between back tick and "|" recipe
           18.39 Procmail's temporary file names while writing file out
           18.40 Parameter $@
           18.41 Procmail variables are null terminated (detecting null string)
           18.42 FROM_DAEMON TO and TO_ and case-sensitiveness
           18.43 TO_ macro deciphered
           18.44 TO_ macro and RFC 822
           18.45 FROM_DAEMON deciphered

       19.0 Technical matters
           19.1 List of exit codes
           19.2 List of precedence codes
           19.3 Sendmail and -t
           19.4 RFC822 Reply-To and formail problem with multiple recipients
           19.5 Procmail and IMAP server
           19.6 Machine which processes mail
           19.7 Compiling procmail and MAILSPOOLHOME

       20.0 Smartlist
           20.1 MLM RFC
           20.2 Other mailing list software
           20.3 SmartList code (mailing list implementation with procmail)
           20.4 Installation trouble: getparams
           20.5 Accepting mail only from users in whitelist(s)

       21.0 Additional procmail or MUA software
           21.1 Comstat to handle multiple mailboxes
           21.2 Elm and pgp support (Mutt is the successor to elm.)
           21.3 MH sites

       22.0 Additional procmail software for Emacs
           22.1 What is Emacs
           22.2 Emacs and procmail mode and Lint
           22.3 Emacs and lining up backslashes
           22.4 Emacs and browsing mailbox files
           22.5 Emacs and live-mode.el
           22.6 Emacs and font-lock.el

       23.0 Procmail, Emacs and Gnus
           23.1 Gnus pointers
           23.2 Why use procmail with Gnus
           23.3 Setting up gnus for procmail - Basics
           23.4 Gnus for procmail - More gnus
           23.5 Emacs and Gnus -- Fiddling with spool files
           23.6 Gnus and article snippets
           23.7 Emacs GNUS - POP - Procmail

       24.0 RFC, Request for comments
           24.1 RFCs and their jurisdiction (munged Addresses)
           24.2 Comments about addresses munging
           24.3 RFC and valid mail address characters
           24.4 RFC and login-name@fdqn
           24.5 RFCs and messages signature
           24.6 RFC and using MIME in Usenet newsgroups
           24.7 Some RFC Pointers

       25.0 Introduction to E-mail Headers
           25.1 To find out more about mail (Resources)
           25.2 Lecture by Alan Stebbens
           25.3 Applied to received messages
           25.4 Bcc lecture by Alan Stebbens
           25.5 Bcc lecture by Philip Guenther

       26.0 Message headers
           26.1 What is correct From address syntax
           26.2 What's that X-UIDL header?
           26.3 What is that first From_ header?
           26.4 Message-Id header
           26.5 Received header
           26.6 Return-Path
           26.7 Errors-To
           26.8 X-Subscription-Info
           26.9 Reply-To header
           26.10 Mail-Copies-To header
           26.11 Mail-Followup-To and Reply-To-Personal headers
           26.12 Content-Length header and From_ specification
           26.13 Moral about CC copies in Usenet

       27.0 Other interesting code
           27.1 Misc mail related pointers
           27.2 Expire mail pointers
           27.3 Usenet News related pointers
           27.4 Code: Perl Extract procmail man pages from 3.11pre7.tar.gz
           27.5 Code: Sh remove matching lines from file

       28.0 UBE in Internet
           28.1 Terms used and foreword
           28.2 UBE strategies
              28.2.1 4g. I asked to be "removed" - guess what? I got another U*E
              28.2.2 4h. I asked to be "removed" - guess what? The message bounced
           28.3 UBE and bouncing message back
           28.4 UBE and "I don't mind" attitude
           28.5 We need a law against UBE

       29.0 Anti-UBE pointers
           29.1 NoCEM, CAUCE and others
           29.2 General Filtering pages (more than procmail)
           29.3 Junk mail and spam
           29.4 Comprehensive list of spammers
           29.5 Misc pointers
           29.6 Questionable UBE stop services
           29.7 UBE related newsgroups or mailing lists
           29.8 Software: the net abuse page
           29.9 Software: adcomplain -- Perl junk mail report
           29.10 Software: Ricochet -- Perl junk mail report
           29.11 Software: yell -- perl
           29.12 Software: RBL lookup tool -- C
           29.13 Software: mapSoN
           29.14 Software: spamgard
           29.15 Software: Spam Be Gone
           29.16 Software: TinyGnus - Emacs Gnus plug-in