Beyond Linux® From Scratch (System V Edition) - Version r12.2-875

Chapter 19. Mail/News Clients

Procmail-3.24

Introduction to Procmail

The Procmail package contains an autonomous mail processor. This is useful for filtering and sorting incoming mail.

[Note]

Note

Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.

Package Information

Additional Downloads

Procmail Dependencies

Recommended

A MTA that installs sendmail

Optional

libnsl-2.0.1

Installation of Procmail

This package does not come with a test suite.

Install Procmail by running the following commands as the root user: 

patch -Np1 -i ../procmail-3.24-consolidated_fixes-1.patch &&

make LOCKINGTEST=/tmp MANDIR=/usr/share/man install       &&
make install-suid

Command Explanations

make LOCKINGTEST=/tmp install: This prevents make from asking you where to test file-locking patterns.

make install-suid: Modifies permissions of the installed files.

Configuring Procmail

Config Files

/etc/procmailrc and ~/.procmailrc

Configuration Information

Recipes have to be written and placed in ~/.procmailrc for execution. The procmailex man page is the starting place to learn how to write recipes. For additional information, see also https://pm-doc.sourceforge.net/.

Contents

Installed Programs: formail, lockfile, mailstat and procmail
Installed Libraries: None
Installed Directories: None

Short Descriptions

formail

is a filter that can be used to format mail into mailbox format

lockfile

is a utility that can lock a file for single use interactively or in a script

mailstat

prints a summary report of mail that has been filtered by procmail since the last time mailstat was ran

procmail

is an autonomous mail processor. It performs all the functions of an MDA (Mail Delivery Agent)