1. Whenever one particular user sends me email, she gets:
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
>"|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/local/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #john"
> (expanded from: <john(_at_)pophost(_dot_)Cadence(_dot_)COM>)
2. I do not even know what the message is indicating.
The message _seems_ to be echoing my ~/.forward file
on pophost.Cadence.COM (which is my pop3 server) - yet
I get (plenty, believe me, hundreds) of email (from others).
3. Debugging ... I (think I) see:
pophost> ls -l ~/.forward
Indicates permissions are 644 (world readable):
-rw-r--r-- 1 john .forward
pophost> cat ~/.forward
Returns the following line:
"|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/local/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #john
Which interprets, I think to:
a) "|IFS=' '" === I think, means 'set the sh shell variable
for Internal Field Separators to a space'.
b) "&&" === is a logical 'and' operator.
c) "exec /usr/local/bin/procmail -f-" === I think, means forward
all mail to the procmail executable.
d) "||" === is a logical 'or' operation.
e) "|| exit 75" === says something like:
"if the IFS or procmail part of this expression
returns 0, then please exit with a status of 75".
f) I'm not sure what a 'status of 75' means, but, it may be the
exit code specified in /usr/include/sysexits.h, e.g.,
77 ===> permission denied
67 ===> addressee unknown
etc.
g) So, in summary, I think this equates to something like:
i) Every keyword in the email must have a space after it
(e.g., "To:<space>") to be considered a keyword ????????
NOTE: I'm just guessing as to what IFS means based on:
csh% man sh | col -b > /tmp/sh.man
csh% vi /tmp/sh.man
ii) and forward the mail to procmail;
iii) if that fails for some reason, exit with a 75 status.
Now, if this interpretation is correct, (then I guess) we start
with the exit code of 75 - which, from /usr/include/sysexits.h
seems to indicate:
csh% grep 75 /usr/include/sysexits.h
REPORTS:
#define EX_TEMPFAIL 75 /*temp failure; user is invited to retry */
Well... uh ... er ... um ... that got me nowhere fast.
I don't have a clue what the problem is.
Q: Anyone have any (better) ideas how to interpret the error message:
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
>"|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/local/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #john"
jjg
"cc john(_at_)cadence(_dot_)com (as well as a reply to the list) would be nice"
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