Re: Exim & ProcMail

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Author: Joseph Metzger
Date:  
To: William Craven, exim-users
Subject: Re: Exim & ProcMail
The documentation does not come out directly and say this but in several
places it mentions applications of the pipe transport where the arguments
are tokenized BEFORE shell expansion or execution. (Look at
restrict_to_path and .forward expansion). It runs the command directly
with out giving it to a command shell. Because exim is parsing the line
by it's rules and not giving it to a shell, you should not have to worry
about setting an Input Field Separator.

On Feb 11, 4:21pm, William Craven wrote:
> Subject: Exim & ProcMail
> In testing the Exim configuration on our main MailServer prior to the
> full installation of Exim on this system I have stumbled on a problem

in
> which Exim handles a pipe to ProcMail.
>
> We have an alias in our main Aliases file which pipes all postmaster
> mail through Procmail - this is so that it filters postmaster mail to
> the appropriate persons. The entry is as follows
>
> postmaster: "|IFS=' ' && exec /local/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75"
>
> Exim balks with a message returned to sender
>
> A message that you sent could not be delivered to all of its

recipients.
> The following address(es) failed:
>
>   postmast@???:
>     generated |IFS=' ' && exec /local/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75
>     "IFS='" command not found for pipe transport

>
> The appropriate Pipe Transport entry in the configuration file is
>
> # pipe:
> #       transport definition to handle pipe addresses generated by

alias
> #       and forward directors (set by the main configuration variable
> #       address_pipe_transport)

>
> pipe:
>     driver = pipe;
>     ignore_status,
>     return_output,
>     no_return_path_add

>
> Once Exim is fully installed on the system - I plan to convert ProcMail
> to Exim Filters but for now I need to get the above to work. The
> simplest is to change the alias entry to "|/local/bin/procmail -f-"
> but it seems to me that "IFS=' '" is crucial.
>
> Any thoughts on how I can get round the problem albiet temporarily.
>
> W.
> --
> William Craven                Email:

William.Craven@???
> University Computing Services        Tel:    +1-604-822-8955
> University of British Columbia        FAX:    +1-604-822-5116
> Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
>-- End of excerpt from William Craven




--
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* Joe Metzger                          Ames Office: (515)294-1939       *
* Computer Systems Engineer            LBNL Office: (510)486-5740       *
* Network Information Services Group   metzger@???                   *
* ESnet, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory  314 Wilhelm, ISU, Ames IA, 50011 *
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