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Re: new to procmail - some questions

2002-11-14 16:59:11
At 00:23 2002-11-15 +0100, Volker Dierks wrote:
:0:
* (^TO|^CC)procmail
procmail-users

Am I right in locking such files on incoming mail?

You should lock whenever you're writing to a mailbox file (versus maildir, where each written message is a unique file).

There is no ^CC macro, and matching the addressee fields isn't the appropriate way to filter mailing lists. View the complete headers of the messages from the procmail mailing list and you should find a number of _unique_ headers which always appear. Many mailing lists share similar characteristics. Even when the list is addressed as a BCC:

I mean, on frequented lists it is possible that there can
be more than one incoming mail at the same time.

Envision this: your mailhost is offline for a few hours because a backhoe dug through a communications line. During the downtime, mail is routed to your backup MX (responsible net.users have them), and when the link is restored, the backup MX starts spooling lots of messages to your mail server. In the process of handling those - from a few hundred, to several thousand, you're bound to have more than ONE process running.

Is procmail able to spool such mails, or is the MTA (Exim) waiting for procmail to finish up?

The MTA is invoking the LDA for each incoming message. The MTA is capable of handling multiple simultanious incomming connections (go ahead, open multiple SMTP sessions with your mail server). I'm sure there are shoddy MTAs out there that can't run concurrent processes, but most can and do, and the possibility of

What about me browsing such mailfolders with my client - mostly Mozilla but I'm going to install twiggi: http://twiggi.sourceforge.net/. Actually that's the reason for me to grabble with procmail - MUA filters with IMAP are painfull.

Well, if your mailfolders are written to by that client, you want to make sure that the locking strategy which it uses is compatible with the locking strategy with procmail is using.

:0:
* 
(^TO|^CC)(debian-devel|debian-devel-announce|submit(_at_)bugs(_dot_)debian(_dot_)org)
debian-devel

sorting mail with to or cc header fields filled with

You should spend some quality time with the procmail manpages. There is no macro "^CC" - procmail won't complain because it'll end up looking for a literal "cc" at the beginning of a line, but your use of it here, in conjunction with a ^TO macro, leads me to believe you don't know that and that you're unaware of just what the ^TO macro encompases. Visit the manpages.

debian-devel(_at_)*
debian-devel-announce(_at_)*
submit(_at_)bugs(_dot_)debian(_dot_)org

into debian-devel?

The RHS of the regexp would do that, but the LHS isn't really valid - it should still work though. Note that you should properly escape dots which are to be treated as dots in regexps, since unescaped, they are single-character wildcards.

---
 Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

 Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
 Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.


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