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Re: procmail and virtual mail accounts

2007-02-28 22:31:07
At 21:58 2007-02-28 -0500, Giff Hammar wrote:
I'm sorry if this is a duplicate, but I didn't see the original post.

I have a web site at a hosting service and have set up several mail
addresses. I want to be able to send an e-mail to a specific address in my
domain and have procmail process the mail.

You need to arrange with the hosting service to set up aliasing to pipe 
messages to procmail.  If they're usually only associated with POP or IMAP 
mailboxes, and not a LOCAL account, procmail won't be invoked for them even 
if it is the local delivery agent (LDA).

I have tried putting the .procmailrc file at several different levels in the
directory structure (/home/domain, /home/domain/mail,
/home/domain/mail/domain.com, /home/domain/mail/domain.com/user), but the
mail always gets delivered to the user inbox. This leads me to believe that
procmail is not being called for the virtual user name since it doesn't
really exist on the server, at least in the Unix sense.

Are you doing this via FTP, or can you SHELL (SSH or Telnet) into the box?

Has anyone set up this kind of system before?

Can't say that I have -- I use real servers with real accounts <g>

My recipe is pretty simple (the names have been changed to protect the
innocent):

:0
* ^TOuser(_at_)domain(_dot_)com
| ./script_to_run-v1.pl

Uhm, if the script is SUPPOSED to be user specific to start with, then 
arguably you could just ask that the perl script be set up as an alias 
target in the system.  Again, call your hosting provider and ask.

In sendmail terms:

[in virtusertable.txt file]
someuser(_at_)yourdomain(_dot_)tld         somespecialalias

[in aliases file]
somespecialalias:               |/path/to/script/script_to_run-v1.pl

If the system is fully virtualized - that is, YOU have a separate /etc/mail 
config from all the other domains (which from connecting to your SMTP, I'd 
say IS NOT the case), then you could alias directly to the one true 
username - otherwise, entries in the aliases file are usernames across ALL 
hosted domains on that box if not otherwise handled in the virtusertable.

The problem with the above setup is that the script is invoked with 
elevated privledges (whatever the MTA is running as), so the admin must set 
things up so that it is invoked as the user - say using:

                 |su - spanky -c /path/to/script/script_to_run-v1.pl

(some tweakage to /etc/suauth might be appropriate)

"hostmonster.com" however doesn't appear to be using sendmail.  They're 
using exim:

220-host16.hostmonster.com ESMTP Exim 4.63 #1 Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:04:15 -0700
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
220 and/or bulk e-mail.


---
  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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