[kwlug-disc] Mutt + Procmail (+ fetchmail)

[Chris Frey]

On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 02:46:55PM -0500, Kyle Spaans wrote:
> which is working out OK. But I still don't really understand what's
> invoking procmail for me? Is it the network admin on my system that
> has configured sendmail to do this for me (call procmail before
> delivering to my mailspool.)?

On most mail systems, as I understand it, procmail *is* the delivery agent.
Sendmail calls procmail to write the mail to the final mailbox.

Grep your sendmail.cf file, and you'll likely see a procmail path in there.


> My next question is, how do you get mail messages all put into an
> "mbox" format file? I tried doing so by a command like:
> 
>         | cat >> $MAILDIR/mail-list-dir/list.mbox

Go back to your original rule:

>         MAILDIR=$HOME/some/dir
>         :0:
>         * ^rule: stuff at mail.list
>         mail-list-dir/

Procmail sees destinations with a trailing slash as maildir destination
directories.  If you put a filename there instead, it will write it as
an mbox file.

         MAILDIR=$HOME/some/dir
         :0:
         * ^rule: stuff at mail.list
         mail-list-dir/stufflist

If you're using mbox anyway, you don't need a directory for each
rule, so this will do:

         MAILDIR=$HOME/some/dir
         :0:
         * ^rule: stuff at mail.list
         stufflist

- Chris