[Dovecot] procmail/formail --> Maildir

Karsten Bräckelmann guenther at rudersport.de
Tue Dec 4 02:17:33 EET 2007


Please resist the urge to top-post.


On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 13:58 +0100, Andre Huebner wrote:
> Sure, its just a modified example. Reason is to mark mails later graphical 
> in a webmailer using some procmail/formail technics.

Well, if the fetchmail tagging technique actually matches your use case,
of course depends on my assumptions being correct. ;)  If so, it will
certainly be cleaner, more accurate, and much lighter on your machine.

It certainly seems to to me. However, you didn't confirm it yet.

Other than that, you probably want to look into your existing procmail
receipts for lurking problems and unwanted matching. Given the "modified
example" you posted.

The bad thing about majorly rewriting existing code that you actually
want to be discussed is, that those who want to help you have to guess.
If need be, just mask the actual match, x-ing out alphanumeric-strings
for privacy reasons. Depending on the topic, even changing an IP address
can be harmful and lead to false advice -- or a problem description,
that just doesn't make sense.


> I think, if i activate the dovecot convert plugin nothig of my procmail must 
> be changed. (just only the bugs ;)  ) Mails will be deliverd in mbox format 
> to /var/spool/mail/xxxxx

The beauty of procmail is, that it can pre-sort your mail. And yes, it
does work perfectly with Dovecot. :)  If you want your mail to be sorted
or classified, why not just let procmail do it?


> On Userlogin dovecot is picking up Mails and deliver them to maildir-inbox. 
> Don't know if this is a very Feasible way, not really clean...

Well, frankly, this is a totally unnecessary step. Since you are using
procmail anyway, just let it deliver the mail into the users Inbox. Why
have the mail being delivered twice?


> http://wiki.dovecot.org/Plugins/Convert?highlight=%28convert_mail%29

Also, this plugin is not meant for delivery as you stated above. AFAIK
it is used to *convert* (sic) existing mbox format mail stores into
Maildir. Which pretty much should be a single task per user. OTOH
without looking through the wiki, there is another plugin, "snarf" or
something to do just that -- harvest an mbox spool, and deliver it to
the actual Inbox.

Even worse, since convert runs once each login, the user will *not* get
any new mail, while being logged in. It won't be before he logs out and
in again, that he will get his mail actually delivered while the user
was idling.

Again, using procmail for local delivery anyway, there is no need for
the snarf plugin either...

  guenther


-- 
char *t="\10pse\0r\0dtu\0. at ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4";
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1:
(c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}



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