Re: Procmail funnyness...

[John Anderson <cobalt f2s com>]

Okay, my config now looks like:

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin
SHELL=/bin/sh
MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
DEFAULT=/var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME
PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail
LOGFILE=$PMDIR/log
VERBOSE=on

:0:
* ^TObalsa
Lists/Balsa

But there is one thing I don't understand, why do I need SendMail in order
to use Procmail?  I thought that the point was Balsa would "pipe" each
message received through Procmail, which would then move the message to the
appropriate folder...  Is this not correct?  For example, procmail works
when I do the following:

(neptune->cobalt) ~ $ cat /var/spool/mail/cobalt | procmail
You have mail in /var/spool/mail/cobalt
(neptune->cobalt) ~ $ cat /var/spool/mail/cobalt

This ends up duplicating whatever is in /var/spool/mail/cobalt a second
time, I had one message, now I have two messages, exactly the same.  If I
did it again, I think I'd have 4...

And I don't even have SendMail installed, nor do I have a SENDMAIL variable
in ~/.procmailrc, but procmail SEEMS to work from the command line (I
haven't had the chance to see if it would move the message to my Balsa
mailbox)...  I guess either I'm incompetent in this, or it's that my setup
of all this is just wrong and I've been mislead...  Do I need to have
SendMail get my mail for me, or fetchmail or something like that, instead
of Balsa?

John Anderson


On 2001.07.31 17:53 John Merryweather Cooper wrote:
> On 2001.07.31 17:05 John Anderson wrote:
> > Thanks for posting the diff, I actually grepped through and found it
> like
> > 5
> > minutes before you posted, but it was nice to see that I changed the
> > right
> > thing...
> > 
> > Well, I still have the problem after recompiling and installing Balsa
> > after
> > making it pclose() rather than fclose()...
> > 
> > If I have no new mail on my pop3 server, everything works perfect.
> > 
> > If I have mail on my pop3 server, it tries to download it.  While the
> box
> > comes up saying it is checking mail, Balsa just hangs, stops redrawing,
> > and
> > must be killed.  In the options for my pop3 account, I have "Filter
> > messages through procmail" checked...  My ~/.procmailrc looks like
> this:
> > 
> > --START--
> > 
> > SHELL=/bin/sh
> > MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
> > VERBOSE=yes
> > 
> > :0:
> > * ^TO:.*balsa-list@gnome.org
> > Lists/Balsa
> > 
> > --END--
> > 
> > My intentions here are to make all the balsa-list stuff go to the Balsa
> > folder I have setup as $HOME/mail/Lists/Balsa.
> >
> 
> The first thing I notice is that VERBOSE=yes should be VERBOSE=on
> (options
> are "on" and "off."  The second problem I notice is you don't have a PATH
> defined--procmail nukes the environment on startup--about the only thing
> you can count on being defined is LOGNAME and HOME.  This is done as a
> security feature.
> 
> Second, where is sendmail (or whatever you're using) on your system?
> "procmail" needs an absolute path to your MTA in the SENDMAIL variable,
> and
> that path should also be int the PATH variable.
> 
> Third, I notice you're attempting to do logging (with VERBOSE=on), but
> you have no LOGFILE defined.  This could be very problematic.
> 
> Fourth, your filter recipe is over-specified (see mine).
> 
> I've attached my .procmailrc for additional guidance.  Note that I'm
> running
> FreeBSD 4.3-STABLE, so some of the paths maybe different, etc.
> 
>  
> > The crash that happens leaves my pop3 mailbox locked, so I have to wait
> > for
> > circa 10 minutes before it becomes unlocked due to timeout (anyone know
> > why
> > the pop3 timeout is so high in the RFC?)...  Am I missing the point of
> > how
> > procmail works, or do I have my ~/.procmailrc setup wrong?  I don't
> know
> > what is going on...  Any suggestions or fixes for this?  Do I have to
> > have
> > procmail running as a service or something?  Do I need to be using
> > fetchmail to get my mail rather than Balsa's internal pop3 retreival
> > method?
> > 
> > John Anderson
> > 
> > 
> > On 2001.07.31 15:35 John Merryweather Cooper wrote:
> > > On 2001.07.31 14:47 John Anderson wrote:
> > > > Hi there, I've been trying to setup procmail to put the Balsa
> Mailing
> > > > List
> > > > emails into their own mail box...  I still haven't gotten that to
> > work,
> > > > but
> > > > I think I've found a smallish (?) problem with the way mail is
> > filtered
> > > > through procmail...  It seems that balsa waits for procmail to be
> > done
> > > > before it can do anything else...  I'll explain better...
> > > > 
> > > > When I try to download mail with a bad ~/.procmailrc Balsa will log
> > > onto
> > > > my
> > > > pop3 server, get mail, and it seems to lock itself into the
> > transaction
> > > > state of the pop3 session, because I think it is trying to filter
> > each
> > > > message through procmail the second it gets it...  I think that
> this
> > is
> > > > bad
> > > > behaviour, because what is happening with me is that it is logging
> > into
> > > > my
> > > > pop3 server, getting a message, passing it to procmail, and
> somewhere
> > > in
> > > > there either balsa becomes dead, or balsa is not threaded in a way
> to
> > > > handle procmail not returning (at least that's what it seems like).
> 
> > So
> > > > then balsa is locked up it seems, and it won't refresh it's display
> > or
> > > > anything, and I have to kill it and start over.  Of course the
> > problem
> > > is
> > > > that it never closed the transaction with my pop3 server, so I have
> > to
> > > > wait
> > > > for at least 10 minutes (the timeout period on pop3 stuff), before
> I
> > > can
> > > > try to get mail again, hoping that I fixed my procmail recipes... 
> > Did
> > > > all
> > > > that make sense?  I hope that my diagnosis of what is happening
> isn't
> > > > totally off...
> > > > 
> > > > John Anderson
> > > > 
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > balsa-list mailing list
> > > > balsa-list@gnome.org
> > > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/balsa-list
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > And here's the diff, if you can't find it on the list:
> > > 
> > > jmc--- libbalsa/pop3.c	Fri Jul 13 01:45:04 2001
> > > +++ libbalsa/pop3.c.new	Tue Jul 24 17:40:42 2001
> > > @@ -507,7 +507,7 @@
> > >  	
> > >  	err = fetch_single_msg(s, msg, i, first_msg, msgs,
> &num_bytes,
> > 
> > >  			       tot_bytes, prog_cb);
> > > -	if (fclose (msg) != 0 && err == POP_OK) err =
> > POP_PROCMAIL_ERR;
> > > +	if (pclose (msg) != 0 && err == POP_OK) err =
> > POP_PROCMAIL_ERR;
> > >  	
> > >  	if (err != POP_OK)  break; /* the 'for' loop */
> > >  	if (delete_on_server) delete_msg(s, i); /* ignore errors */
> > > 
> > 
>