blgroup(_at_)netcom(_dot_)com (Patricia Buchanan) writes:
...
After having found out that the human masses on the Internet are not
always capable of using the Subject line for an autoresponder, I am going
to a simple one. Greg was nice enough to send me a very simple
autoresponder, which works for him, but not for me.
PROBLEMS
1. It is having trouble with writing a reply after the X-Loop command.
2. Is msgid.cache which catches duplicate messages a folder or a file?
A file.
3. Will * !From+[^ ]*{postmaster|mailer) keep the mail lists from
receiving the autoresponse, if I uncomment it?
It's usually preferable to use
* ! ^FROM_DAEMON
as that covers just about all mailing list senders.
...
The .procmailrc file is next followed by an abreviated log file.
VERBOSE=on
LOGFILE=/$HOME/LOG
MAILDIR=/$HOME/Mail
#:0 Wh: msgid.lock
#| formail -D 8192 msgid.cache
#
:0 Whc
* ^TOblgroup(_at_)netcom(_dot_)com
* !^X-Loop: blgroup(_at_)netcom(_dot_)com
#* !^FROM +[^ ]*(postmaster|mailer)
| {formail -r \
-A"X-Loop: blgroup(_at_)netcom(_dot_)com" \
-i"Subject: Autoreply from pblgroup(_at_)ix(_dot_)netcom(_dot_)com" ; \
-cat /$HOME/.autorespond ; \
echo " "; cat /$HOME/.sig \
} | $SENDMAIL -oi -t
In all the versions of bourne shell that I know, a '{' used to open a
'block' (for lack of a better term), needs to be followed by
whitespace, and the '}' that closes it needs to be preceded by either a
newline, semicolon, or ampersand. Since backslash-newline combos are
stripped by procmail, the '}' in the above does not satisfy that, just
as the '}' doesn't satisfy the first condition.
(In case you're wondering why the restrictions exist, when parens don't
have any such restrictions: braces sometimes are used in normal command
line argument contexts, such as with find: "find . -name *.o -exec rm
{} \;". In order to avoid recognizing those braces as shell syntax,
braces are treated as reserved words, and are only recognized when
other shell builtins like 'while' and 'if' would be recognized.)
However, the above doesn't explain the strange errors in the log.
Perhaps you have a version of procmail before version 3.11pre?
Comments were only allowed among the conditions starting in one of the
pre versions, though I'm not sure which one.
Philip Guenther
The log file:
procmail: Match on ! "^X-Loop: blgroup(_at_)netcom(_dot_)com"
procmail: Error while writing to "/_bl3Gmail6"
procmail: Error while writing to "/"
procmail: Skipped "| {formail -r \"