Learning procmail

[sheila]

OK, I'm getting ready to set up the moderation software on my web site. I'll be using STUMP Robomoderator (I hope!)
[see http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/ if interested]

Anyhow...I need to learn how to fumble around with procmail. So,

Question 1: The mail transport agent assumed in the docs I'm looking at is sendmail. Although qmail is also a mail transport agent. Well, now, NINE has both of these installed, right? So which one do I work with?

Question 2: procmail works with a .forward file. I've telnetted in and searched everywhere. There is no .forward file at this time. Can I simply make my own? Does it matter in which[nbsp][nbsp]directory?

I'm trying to learn about procmail from this site:
http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/#mta

Thanks for any tips or help,
Sheila King
sheila@thinkspot.net
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila

[Justin]

1) Our Sendmail is actually just a wrapper - it is Qmail - so either way is fine.

2) The .forward file doesn't work with Qmail - but you can use procmail without this (I think so anyway - might depend on the application)... alternatively you can use .qmail-command files to control and process your mail - see http://www.qmail.org/ to find info on .qmail-command, or type "man qmail-command" from the command line.

Hope this helps.

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[sheila]

Hi Justin,

OK, the reason I was trying to use procmail, is because the author of the moderation software I'm planning to run[nbsp][nbsp]recommends it. He basically recommends it for sorting and filing purposes.

Are you saying that qmail has the same functionality, sorting and filtering wise??

[Justin]

Qmail has that and much more - procmail is on the servers and available for your use if you can get around the need for a .forward file (again, can do the same functionality of a .forward file with .qmail-command)... but I would go with .qmail-command all the way. EZ-MLM is pretty much based on .qmail-command, and I use it personally as well as for some internal FQ projects.

Trying to explain .qmail-command would be very difficult - it took me a long time to learn what I know now (and I still have a lot to learn ;) ), mostly by experimentation (be careful!)...

Reading the man pages and the above link (and while you're at it, examine the autoresponder files as well as the files created by EZ-MLM - that helped me a lot).

Hope this helps...

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support