sending local mail out of a procmail script (sounds weird, I know...)

Hi all,

I've hardly started using procmail, and already have a probably  
sophisticated problem:

I want certain mails I get to be dealt with automatically, but at the  
end of this process I want to send a mail to myself confirming the  
process.

My entry in .procmailrc is:

        :0
        *^Subject:.*<KEYWORD>.*
        | <MY_SCRIPT>

<MY_SCRIPT> deals with the mails the way I want; all this works perfectly well.

However, at the end of <MY_SCRIPT> I send a mail to myself:

        echo "MY_MESSAGE" | eval "mail -s \"MY_SUBJECT\" uli"

This message never arrives.

If I start <MY_SCRIPT> without procmail, instead explicitly piping a  
test mail into it:

        echo <TEST_MAIL> | <MY_SCRIPT>

I do get my confirming mail; as soon as I start it from procmail, which  
pipes exactly the same mail as the test mail into it, I don't get my  
confirming mail.

To make sure the code is executed I've added a

        echo "before mail" > PROTOCOL

and

        echo "after mail" > PROTOCOL

to <MY_SCRIPT>, surrounding the line that generates the confirming mail.  
Both lines are written into PROTOCOL, i.e. the script gets executed  
completely.

Obviously the problem is that

        eval "mail -s \"MY_SUBJECT\" uli"

doesn't work when executed from within procmail.


But why? Here I'm totally at a loss. :-(

And what to do to solve this problem?


Thanks a lot for any insight!



                Bye
                        Uli

_____________________________________________________________________

Uli Zappe               E-Mail: 
uli(_at_)tallowcross(_dot_)uni-frankfurt(_dot_)de
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