[ILUG] Procmail not working on incoming mail?

[Sean]

Dave Neary wrote something:
{ 
{ Sorry...information overload. I was tring to be thorough.
{ 
{ I only added the .forward after the problem made itself known. The
{ procmail stuff in the sendmail.cf file is the default setup (with some
{ tweaking from install-sendmail scripts), and on any other box I've used
{ the combination, I have had no problems.
{ 
{ fetchmail -v only gets the mails once, but it gets mails which it has
{ previously gotten (doesn't delete mail from the server, and doesn't check
{ procmail rules to eliminate duplicates, presumably). The multiple messages
{ are in /var/spool/mail/dave, after fetchmail does it's thing.

  Do you have a .fetchmailrc ?  And in it is there 'keep' keyword (pop3) ?
  fetchmail defaults to flushing (deleting) mail from the server, unless
  you've told it not to.  This seems to be your problem..

{ 
{ Possibly I don't understand well enough how mail gets downloaded, or how
{ procmail got invoked. I assumed that it would be invoked automatically
{ when mail arrives in the local mailbox. I guess it's possible that it's
{ only invoked if mail's transfered by sendmail, as opposed to fetched by
{ fetchmail. But to be honest, I don't really understand what's happenning
{ at all.

 man fetchmail:

       As each message is retrieved fetchmail  normally  delivers
       it  via  SMTP  to  port 25 on the machine it is running on
       (localhost), just as though it were being passed in over a
       normal  TCP/IP  link.   The  mail  will  then be delivered
       locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery  Agent,  usu-
       ally  sendmail(8)  but your system may use a different one
       such as smail, mmdf, exim, or qmail).  All  the  delivery-
       control  mechanisms  (such  as  .forward  files)  normally
       available through  your  system  MDA  and  local  delivery
       agents will therefore work.

  could be that you're not using sendmail ?

  why not try: fetchmail -m '/usr/bin/procmail -d %T'
  Tells fetchmail to use procmail as the MDA, thus cutting out sendmail,
  which in this case isn't a bad idea (unless this is for more than one user)

  However your mail is left in /var/..., meaning that procmail
  isn't getting used via the .forward ?  Is sendmail being used or
  is another MDA being used ?  telnet 0 25 to find out.

{ 
{ Cheers,
{ Dave.
{ 
{ On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Kenn Humborg wrote:
{ 
{ > Dammit, narrow the problem down a bit.  Get rid of the .forward
{ > and the procmail stuff and see what happens.  That'll tell you
{ > whether you need to focus on fetchmail/sendmail or procmail.
{ > 
{ > Try looking at /var/spool/mail/$USER to see if multiple messages
{ > are appearing there.
{ > 
{ > Try fetchmail -v to see if fetchmail is downloading messages
{ > multiple times.
{ > 
{ > Kenn
{ 

Sean.
.