procmail
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Procmail and POP mailbox

1997-09-04 17:37:06

I'm wondering how I would go about processing mail with Procmail, and
*LEAVING* selected messages in the inbox for retrieval via a POP mail client.

Currently, I forward all messages for reading into a separate POP mailbox
(an account on another service).  This has worked reasonably well,
excepting when the remote mailbox is inaccessible for one reason or another
(network problems, or the server is down).  However, this is an uneccessary
waste of bandwidth, and I'd like to just fetch the mail from the server
which processes the mail -- if I can...

Specific issues I have with trying to leave the messages in the inbox:

        * How to I ensure that procmail processes the message BEFORE I can
possibly download it via the POP client (that is, I don't want to happen to
be retrieving messages with the POP client at precisely the moment a
message comes in, and end up pulling it from the spool before procmail gets
to it).  Since procmail is invoked via the .forward file, I assume that it
will see the message before the POPMail server, but not being an expert in
such things, I don't really know.  Reassurrances that procmail will always
get the message before a POP client could would be nice...

        * Does anything differ when procmail is invoked as the local delivery
agent, versus being started via a .forward (I have more than one account on
different servers, and procmail is invoked differently on them - on my own
local mail server, it is the local delivery agent, while on two other
accounts, it must be invoked via .forward).

        * How can I process messages with procmail (as I do now), and then say
"oh, this message is okay, leave it in my inbox so I can download it via POP."

        * How can I modify a message - (I know, using f switch and formail) say 
to
add a header line indicating that the message was filtered a certain way,
so that the (considerably less powerful insofar as filtering) POP client
can filter on the content of this extra header, and send the MODIFIED
message into the inbox?


These might seem like trivial operations, but as I've been using procmail
extensively to sort, delete and _forward_ mail, I haven't attempted to read
it locally with a POP client - and with the volume (and importance) of the
mail I have, I don't want to experiment with POP3 on the delivery server
unless I'm sure of what I'm doing.

Thanks for any clarification that can be offered.

---
 Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.

 Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering
 Post Box 2395 / San Rafael, CA  94912-2395

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