procmail
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Re: Procmail problem

2000-12-12 19:39:45
At 16:28 2000-12-12 -0700, Jim McMaster wrote:

Point of contention: you did not change your mail DOMAIN. You changed your mail HOST. There's a BIG difference.

The procmail list address changed about six months ago. Please make a note of the current address.

1)  Some idiot mail lists have broken unsub processes, and will not unsub me
no matter what I do.

Sounds like you need to forge an unsub for yourself - a process made easier by the fact that you're still supposed to receive messages destined for the old account (in the event that there is a confirmation requirement).

Examine the received headers for indications of what actual address is subscribed (the envelope address at your old account). This may differ ever so slightly from the regular address you used.

2)  My current setup bypasses my spam filters.

If as you say later in your message, you're not seeing any log activity, and test messages appear to go to the ether, how is it that you know this, when apparently no messages are being received?

3)  Manually telling people about the new address is a pain.

Deal with the mailing lists issue. THEN, either set up an autoreply to everyone who mails you at the old address (since, after all, you shouldn't be getting any messages at it anymore), or write a recipe that gets the reply-to info for each message that comes through and emits it to a file. On some interval, you can look at the file, run unique on it, and use it to send form messages to the people who insist on continuing to send messages to the old address.

Eventually, if you've _really_ changed addresses, what you do is CLOSE the old account (or set it up to bounce all incoming messages). If someone can't be bothered to note your new address when you tell them, there's no reason you should bother to process their email.


Presumably the "new" .procmailrc is running on the old host. You don't actually make this clear, certainly not from the top of your message - I infer it from your mention of the .forward

#Tell people address has changed

cluetime: your autoreply recipe sets an X-Loop, BUT DOES NOT CHECK FOR ONE. Thus, you may think you're avoiding a loop condition, but you are not.

       "The email you just sent has been automatically forwarded.\n" \

clue #2: as long as people believe their email is being forwarded, they will be less likely to take prompt action to recognize your proper address. You're better off telling them that the message WAS NOT forwarded.

I set up the .forward as:
"|IFS=' '&&p=/apps/bin/procmail&&test -f $p&&exec $p -f-||exit 75#mcmaster"

Have you verified that procmail is actually /apps/bin on the mail host? This isn't a typical location for it.

Have you attempted to pipe a message into procmail on the old host?

Is your .foward _world readable_ ?

Have you tried the more abbreviated form of the .forward:

"|IFS=' '&&exec /apps/bin/procmail -f-||exit 75#mcmaster"

Does this work?

When I send a test message to the old address, it just vanishes.

Q: what about the _other_ messages presumably appearing there? Are they dissappearing too? if not, I'd suspect that your ISP has a mail config snafu, and your message is being ditched on its way between the two similarly named accounts.

There is no log file at all, and the mail does not appear in any of the usual locations. It looks like procmail is not running at all. Can anyone tell me where to start looking for the dumb mistake I am making?

Are you sure it's being forwarded? Try renaming your current .forward and replacing it with a simple .forward containing nothing more than your new address and send a test message. Do you get that?

If there's no log activity, then it would seem as if it isn't being processed AT ALL.

You might find that using _fetchmail_ to retrieve messages waiting at the old account (if they're available via POP3 or IMAP, or a few other protocols) and performing all your procmail scripting from the new host may solve your problem. Have you tried issuing POP3 commands against the old account (telnet oldhost 110 ; USER username ; PASS password ; LIST ; QUIT)? Perhaps the messages are being deposited directly into a POP mailbox.


---
 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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