procmailrc filter groups?

lmcilwain · 08-07-2006, 09:41 PM

Can anyone tell me if there is a way to group filters without having to split each individual filter into a file?

Right now I just use the standard .procmailrc file and some filters go to a mailbox and some to anther mailbox and some that to go the bit bucket.

My issue is that I have to creat a separate entry for each filter even though its going to the same place.

Example:

:0
* ^From.*@cs\.com
/dev/null

:0
* ^From.*@promotionalaprons\.com
/dev/null

Is there a way that I can combine thse to so that I can just keep adding to the entry.

Something to the effect of (but I know is probably wrong):

:0
* ^From.*@cs\.com
* ^From.*@promotionalaprons\.com
/dev/null

Any suggestions are appreciated..

unSpawn · 08-08-2006, 04:57 PM

Something to the effect of (but I know is probably wrong)
No it isn't wrong. If the destination is the same you can group all sorts of filter criteria, just like you showed.

lmcilwain · 08-08-2006, 05:10 PM

Alright, I will give that a shot... I didn't realize it was as simple as listing each criteria right under each other like that was ok. My first impression of that is that the filter would be looking for all criteria to be met betwen :0 and /dev/null before it would attempt to place filter it properly.

unSpawn · 08-08-2006, 05:58 PM

Alright, I will give that a shot..
If you're going to experiment you best set stuff like VERBOSE=on and LOG=/some/file in your resource file and test it with delivered email. Save this as procmailtest.rc:

Code:

VERBOSE=on
LOG="$HOME/procmailtest.log"

:0
* ^From.*@cs\.com
* ^From.*@promotionalaprons\.com
$HOME/mail/thrashcan

Now open up your mailbox in vi or any text editor and cut a single message to file (say procmailtest.msg) to make sure you preserve all headers. Change the "From:" header if necessary. Now run it like this:

Code:

cat procmailtest.msg 2>&1|formail -s 2>&1|procmail -m procmailtest.rc 2>&1 | tee procmailtest1.log

Now procmailtest.log and/or procmailtest1.log should show delivery info w/o you fscking up already working email delivery ;-p

the filter would be looking for all criteria to be met betwen :0 and /dev/null before
Procmail also has two often overlooked man pages: procmailrc and procmailex...

lmcilwain · 08-08-2006, 08:24 PM

I don't recall if I have verbose on or but I didn't turn the log on (Which I should have done)but created a test .procmail file to replace my original (of course after making a backup).

I grouped one of the filters that I know gets used a lot to see how it would work and it didn't work. The messages came to my inbox instead of the mailbox that I had it filtered to. I will give it another shot tomorrow and turn the log on so I can paste log info if its relevant.

I did take another look at google and it looks like procmail uses pipes to separate individual filters that go to the same inbox. Here is the snipet I got from a site:

--------------------
# put any mail from newdream or dreamhost in the folder 'junk'
# (we don't recommend that you actually use this one, of course)
:0
* ^From:.*(newdream\.net|dreamhost\.com)
.junk/

unSpawn · 08-09-2006, 08:43 AM

You're right. Filtering using multiple rules depend on the return value of the one before, so if the first one doesn't match then the rest is skipped, so the stringing together (newdream\.net|dreamhost\.com) should work but maybe better use spamassassin.

lmcilwain · 08-09-2006, 09:58 PM

Ok, I will check out spamssassin and see how that works. Stay Tuned...