Is there a software that can do this?
 

I want to be able to check my mail, and if it is from a certain email address, to exceute a command line or a file. For example, i want it to check to see if the email is my hotmail email, and if it is, run 'sshd start' so that way I can access my SSH server.

I'm sure it is possible.

Are you running your own mailserver? If so what are you using for smtp?

If you don't have an smtp server then you can probably do it with fetchmail.

i dont have my own mail server. Im using Fetchmail to get the emails from my ISP's POP3 server. but i was looking through the options for fetchmail and it only moves the emails to my Mail folder and wont let me execute any commands depending on the email address :(

Sorry - I should have said - you will need to use procmail to do that once the message has been downloaded.