Top Document: Filtering Mail FAQ Previous Document: 4.0 Filter Next Document: 4.2 Tracking Your Incoming Mail See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge 1] Find out if filter is on your system and what the full path to it is. If you are using the C shell (csh) type: which filter Or, if you are using the Korn shell (ksh) or the Bourne shell (sh) type: type filter If neither ``which'' nor ``type'' are on your system try ``where'' and ``whereis''. If your system doesn't have filter ask your system administrator to install it; or even better ask her to install procmail. 2] Note the full path of your home directory by typing: cd pwd 3a] Create ~/.elm/filter-rules. (Note that throughout this article I use pico for editing files. Replace ``pico'' with your editor.) cd mkdir .elm cd .elm pico filter-rules 3b] Enter a modified version of the following in your ~/.elm/filter-rules if (subject contains "test") then save "/j/nancym/Mail/IN.testing" Replace /j/nancym with your home directory path (see step 2). Replace /Mail with the name of the directory where your mail folders are stored. Pine and Berkeley Mail use /mail (lower case m) and Elm uses /Mail (upper case M). 4] To see what the filter rule will do type the following at your Unix prompt: filter -r 5a] Create a ~/.forward file by typing the following. (Pico's -w flag tells pico not to auto wrap lines.) cd pico -w .forward 5b] Enter a modified version of the following in your ~/.forward: "|/usr/local/bin/filter -o /j/nancym/.elm/filter-errors" == IMPORTANT NOTES == * Make sure you include the quotes ("). * The vertical bar (|) is a pipe. * Replace /usr/local/bin with the correct path for filter (see step 1). * Replace /j/nancym with your home directory (see step 2). * Do NOT expect environment variables, like $HOME, to work in your .forward file. * Do NOT expect ~ to mean your home directory in the .forward file. 5c] Note that on many systems you need to make your .forward is world readable and your home directory world searchable in order for the mail transport agent to "see" it. To do this type: cd chmod 644 .forward chmod a+x . 6] Send yourself two test messages: one with ``test'' in the subject and one without ``test'' in the subject. 7a] Start your mailer (pine, elm, etc.) and check that the messages were delivered correctly. The one with ``test'' in the subject should be in the folder IN.testing and the one without ``test'' in the subject should be in your inbox. If these were delivered correctly go on to step 8. 7b] TROUBLESHOOTING * If the two messages were not delivered correctly look at your ~/.elm/filter-errors to see if you can determine what the problem is. * Check these two files for typos: ~/.forward ~/.elm/filter-rules * Check the file and directory permissions of your .forward (set in 5c above). Type... In order to... ------- -------------- cd Go to your home directory. ls -l .forward Check the permission: it should say -rw-r--r-- ls -ld . Check permission of home dir: it should say drwx?-x?-x The ?'s may be r's or hyphens or one of each (i.e., drwx--x--x, drwxr-xr-x, drwxr-x--x, drwx--xr-x). * If none of these turn up the problem edit your ~/.forward so that filter will be verbose with it's output (use the -vo flag). "|/usr/local/bin/filter -vo /j/nancym/.elm/filter-errors" And repeat steps 6 and 7. After you get filter to work you will probably want to change the ``-vo'' flag back to ``-o''. 8] After you have successfully tested filter in steps 6 and 7, edit ~/.elm/filter-rules so that it contains a modified version of the following: # if (subject contains "test") then save "/j/nancym/Mail/IN.testing" if (to contains "www-talk") then save "/j/nancym/Mail/IN.www-talk" if (to contains "hopos-l") then save "/j/nancym/Mail/IN.hopos" Replace /j/nancym with your home directory path and /Mail with the name of your mail directory. Replace the mailing list string (e.g., "www-talk") and the name of the mail folder (e.g., IN.www-talk) with text for your mailing lists. Note that ``to contains...'' means either the To or Cc header contains... Rather than deleting the test line, it's useful to just turn it into a comment (by preceding it with #) so that you can easily use it for future testing. User Contributions:Top Document: Filtering Mail FAQ Previous Document: 4.0 Filter Next Document: 4.2 Tracking Your Incoming Mail Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: FAQ Editor <faq-editor@ii.com>
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
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