Greetings,
I am currently using fetchmail 6.2.1 (together with sendmail and qpopper) on
a MacOS X 10.1.5 host in an "abusing multidrop" configuration, as described
in "THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES" on the man page. That is, two
POP mailboxes receiving mail for a number of aliases, which are mapped to
internal POP mailboxes by fetchmail.
I'm aware of the issues with this, and I'm almost happy accepting the
consequences. I have
set no bouncemail
so that mail is never lost - it just requires manual intervention by the
postmaster (aliased to root and then forwarded to me using .forward)
sometimes. However, I'm after thoughts about using procmail to reduce the
amount of manual intervention required. Here's my sample procmail recipe:
##
# /var/root/.procmailrc
##
# see procmailrc(5) for general documentation
##
##
# The following rules are all workarounds for an issue where fetchmail(1)
# cannot determine the recipient mailbox for mail:
# - addressed by certain mailing-list software,
# - where > 1 addressees share our MX domain,
# - where the destination mailbox is a BCC addressee, or
# - in other circumstances where the To: header is deliberately or
# unintentionally mangled.
#
# In these cases fetchmail sends the message to the mailbox of last resort
# - postmaster - which on this system is an alias for `root'. We can use
# procmail(1) to redirect the message from `root' to the correct mailbox
# if we can predict enough of the message contents to identify it uniquely.
##
# local_user_1
##
# mailing_list_1
:0
* ^From:(_dot_)*known_user_1(_at_)known_company_1(_dot_)com
* ^To: undisclosed-recipients:;
* ^Subject:.*known_subject_regexp_pattern
!local_user_1
#
# mailing_list_2
:0
* ^From:(_dot_)*known_user_2(_at_)known_company_2(_dot_)com
* ^To:[ ]*$
!local_user_1
##
##
# local_user_2
...
##
# everything else goes through to me
##
:0
!my_account
##
# end .procmailrc
##
I've tested this with some success, but I noted that the Return-Path header
was set to root(_at_)mail_server rather than the original sender - I guess this
makes sense, since what the procmail recipe is doing is literally forwarding
a message delivered to root after being redirected by fetchmail to the
postmaster.
I'm interested in people's thoughts about the wisdom of this approach, any
potential pitfalls, if I can change the Return-Path header, and if this is a
wise thing to do, etc etc.
Here is my .fetchmalrc in case it is relevant:
% sudo cat /etc/mail/.fetchmailrc
Password:
##
# fetchmail(1) run control file
##
# NB: This file contains the ISP POP mailbox passw0rd,
# so set permissions accordingly (fetchmail requires this anyway)
#
# See: Fetchmail home page, http://catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/
##
# global fethcmail settings
##
set syslog
set daemon 60
set no bouncemail
#
##
# default server settings
##
defaults \
timeout 1200 \
proto POP3 \
auth password \
password ******** \
limit 8388608
#
##
# account_1 mailbox
##
poll pop.isp.com \
aka isp.com \
user account_1 to \
account_1=user_3 \
alias_1=user_1 \
alias_2=user_2 \
alias_3=user_4 \
alias_4=user_1
#
##
# account_2 mailbox
# (for mail to our_domain.com.au virtual domain, pass addresses through
# unchanged to SMTP listener and let it map them to local mailboxes)
##
poll pop.isp.com \
aka isp.com \
localdomains our_domain.com \
user account_2 to \
alias_5=user_4 \
alias_6=user_4 \
alias_7=user_4
#
##
# end .fetchmailrc
##
Regards,
Damon
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