Introduction to Procmail
The Procmail package contains an autonomous mail processor. This is useful for filtering and sorting incoming mail.
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:
sed -i 's/getline/get_line/' src/*.[ch] &&
patch -Np1 -i ../procmail-3.22-consolidated_fixes-1.patch &&
make LOCKINGTEST=/tmp MANDIR=/usr/share/man install &&
make install-suid
Command Explanations
sed -i 's/getline/get_line/' src/*.[ch]: This renames procmail's getline function to avoid conflict with the getline function from glibc.
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)
|