On Sun, 7 Jul 1996, White Lotus wrote:
I am computer illiterate. I know almost no unix but I do have a procmail
filter and love it. I would like to know two things:
I am not completely computer illiterate (I used to be a systems
programmer in the IBM mainframe world), but I admit that I am not a
Un*x guru or a total procmail specialist. However, I have been able
to use procmail to good purpose.
1. Is it possible to forward mail from your friends and send everything else
to /dev/null (such as asking your friends to use a password in your Subject
line).
I would think so, yes. As long as your friends put some consistent
(i.e., always there) and distinctly recognizable character string in
the Subj: line which is extremely unlikely to appear in any other mail,
then procmail should be able to recognize it and take action
accordingly on whether the string is or is not present. Even I ought
to be able to set that one up. Just come up with a good "password"
string.
2.. Can anyone direct me as to how to set up an echo such that when someone
mails me, they will get a message in return? I need it for both vacation and
I would love to have some choice text to send to people who are harassing
me. Right now the harassers just get their e-mail bounced back to them.
Echos need to be handled with discretion. If you are actually
going to be away, such as on vacation and think you really want to let
people know that so they won't wonder why you are not answering their
mail, then I would say that is OK. There is a sample vacation
autoresponder in man procmailex which may be a little better than the
'vacation' program in that it only sends one notice to a recipient even
if the person send more than one message. Just be sure to put the
vacation autoresponder recipe *AFTER* any recipes handling mailing list
mail! Mailing lists do not need to know.
As for sending a generic blanket response, such as "I got your
message," this is a bit controversial. I did it for a while and then
stopped. Some people like to receive such messages (I do), but others
find them highly annoying.
Sending "some choice text" back to harassers is much the same as
setting up a vacation autoresponder without the component that keeps a
database so that a recipient receives only one message. In your
selection criteria, you just have to be very precise in identifying the
harassers so that you do not send your "choice text" to the wrong
people. However, in my humble opinion, if someone actually is
harassing you, it might be more effective to send a complaint to the
person's postmaser or system administrator rather than to engage in a
shouting match.
The other thing I would like is if there are any resources explaining
procmail and giving plenty of examples - websites or books. Something that
you do not have to be a computer expert to understand.
I am not aware of any, but that doesn't mean nothing is out there.
Have you read the man pages on procmail? procmail, procmailrc,
procmailex? I admit that for the unitiated (i.e., not Un*x-
experienced) they can be a little opaque, but there is a lot of good
material in them. As for the Web, you might try one of the big search
engines such a Yahoo!, Altavista, or Lycos to see if you can find
anyting. (You can get to those engines from my home page.)
Paul <pobart(_at_)access(_dot_)digex(_dot_)net>
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