I've been telling folks they should not use LOCKFILE=somefile unless
they really know what they're doing, and wondering for a long time
where this practice comes from. Well, turns out this is in
examples/1procmailrc in the standard distribution ... (It's in
3procmailrc too BTW.)
# Please check if all the paths in PATH are reachable, remove the ones that
# are not.
PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/bin:/usr/local/bin:.
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail # You'd better make sure it exists
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/mbox
LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/from
LOCKFILE=$HOME/.lockmail
<snip>
Is this doing anything useful other than making sure the newbies get
orderly log files?
What about explicitly setting DEFAULT? I've been advising against
that, too.
I remember generally feeling rather intimidated by the stuff in
examples/ when I started out with Procmail. I don't recall having read
any discussion about what the examples actually do. Perhaps this would
be a good addition to the FAQ? (Or maybe Stephen can return from the
dead and include at least a README.)
/* era */
(You could also discuss the advisability of including dot in
Procmail's path ... OTOH, maybe it's nice to be able to call up
programs in MAILDIR without an explicit pathname.)
--
Paparazzi of the Net: No matter what you do to protect your privacy,
they'll hunt you down and spam you. <http://www.iki.fi/~era/spam/>