Skip to main content
CSE Email System - Server Side Filtering with Procmail

CSE Email System - Server Side Filtering with Procmail

Benefits of procmail:

  • Automatically sort email based on subject, sender, recipient
  • Filter Spam
  • Filter Mailing lists
  • Other cool tricks, but that is beyond this scope. Google for procmail recipes

Where does it go:

  • Must use Linux.  Connect to arctic or use a lab machine
  • Your email box is under /user/mail/username/
  • It then collects in the Maildir
  • Any mailboxes or folders you create will then exist under Maildir
    starting with a "."
  • For example, a folder named Recipes will be in
    /user/mail/username/Maildir/.Recipes
  • Under .Recipes, new email will go in a directory called "new",
    anything read with be in "cur"
  • Using vi, emacs, or whatever editor you prefer, create a file
    /user/mail/username/.procmailrc
  • (Please use your own username,
    and yes that is a period before procmailrc)

Sample Recipe:

  • Sample /user/mail/username/.procmailrc

 

--------------cut from here------------------
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/bin
LOGFILE=$HOME/procmail.log # Comment out if you do not want logs
VERBOSE=yes # Comment out to remove extra log details

##################################
#
# Basic procmail recipe
#
#
# Mail is stored in /user/mail/$username/Maildir
# Configs in /user/mail/$username
# includes: .procmailrc .forward and .spamassassin
#
# Email is configured to always run Spamassassin
#
# Check out www.cse.msu.edu/facility for more examples
#
##################################

# Example to show subject
# Delete any email with Flame in the subject (send it /dev/null)
:0
* ^Subject:.*Flame
/dev/null

 ---------------to here-----------------------