Dear List:
Not to be critical of all the very fine work, but the procmail man page and
what I've seen on Alan Stebbens' E-Mail Software Page are not geared for
someone in my position. They, like so much documentation out there, are
good as a reference for someone who already knows how to do it - and could
be used to get started after a very lengthy analysis and study of the mass
of technical information.
In the short week that I have been on this list, this is the second plea
for help, and the same one I could have written myself. Etiquette has
prevented me from barging in before now, but the knowledge that this
list is NOT fullfilling the novices needs, has me echoing the above
comment. No one bothered to even respond adequately to the first plea,
I am curious if all novices are being ignored until they go away. I am
a novice -- just ask me to go and I promise to do so.
I haven't been on this list recently.
I just re-subscribed from my home account
last night.
The last time I was subscribed to this list
I was also on list-managers(_at_)greatcircle(_dot_)com,
bugtraq, linux-security, and several other
mailing lists. I was also a full time sysadmin,
webmaster, and assistant Netware supervisor.
Now I'm "just" a consultant; doing my best to
keep the amount of billable work I do down to
a small amount so that I can work on my own
writing and research projects.
However I'll try to answer the novice level
questions as I'm soaking up the more advanced
stuff.
I suspect that the reason so much of the
discussion here is at such a technical level
is that most of the participants are over-worked
admins' who look at "newbie" questions and
get frustrated knowing how long it takes to
explain all the background that get's one
started.
I noticed, myself, that the learning curve for
'procmail' starts nearly vertical and then
levels off to something manageable. This is because
so much of the work is in setting put the
environment *around* procmail rather than the
actual details of the scripting syntax and
language.
Please go over the response I sent to Tom
(my first message to the list since I resubscribed)
and let me know if there are things that are
still unclear. I'll try to refine that into an
FAQ suitable for novices since there's obviously
a demand for it.