At 18:05 2003-10-21 +0100, Adrian Simmons wrote:
Hello, recently I started using procmail to send my high scoring spam and
virus tagged messages to /dev/null,
"recently started using procmail" and "/dev/null" don't belong in the same
phrase. At a MINIMUM, you should be filing messages in a mailbox, and
looking at it periodically. Only after you've become familiar with
procmail should you send things to the bitbucket from which you can't
retrieve things.
So now I have this in my ~/.procmailrc :
:0 c
backup
If you're writing to a MAILDIR, I'd generally expect a trailing slash on
the destination filespec. Otherwise, it looks like you're writing to a
file, and you don't have a lockfile flag on the flags line...
I'm also thinking I'd like all the messages in a single file, mbox format,
I'd have to remove the current directory and create the file and use a
rule like this for the backup, right?
:0 c
$PMDIR/backup
But then how would I limit the number of backed-up messages? Anybody got a
recipe they could share?
Your problem here is the need to constantly reprocess the mailbox to
eliminate the messages stored at the top when tacking something onto the
bottom. Not trivial (and highly inefficient in any event). You're better
off with a MAILDIR for backups if you want to keep the backup limited to
some number of messages.
An alternative is to simply back up messages on a daily bassis - toss
messages into a date-named mailbox file (see procmailex, I'm sure there's
such an example), and externally, via a cron script, delete the backup
mailbox corresponding to "x" days ago. Similarly, you can rotate a backup
every "x" days (which keeps you out of the business of having to name files
with dates, etc).
Consider the purpose of a backup, and whether, if you get a lot of
messages, you'll really be around to solve something just because 21
messages have processed through your account - isn't it easier to expect
that you'll hit your account at least every 3 days or something like that?
---
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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