Sherwood Botsford wrote:
>
> On Wed, 28 Jan 1998, Philip Hazel wrote:
>
> = On Wed, 28 Jan 1998, Lee McLoughlin wrote:
> =
> = > I've read throught filter.txt and haven't found a way to do this.
> = >
> = > What I'd like to do is run an external filter program from my .forward
> = > over incoming email to decide if its spam and use the exit code (or
> = > output?) in a conditional. This is to decide wether to junk the message
> = > or use the remaining rules in my .forward.
> =
> = There is no way to do this. The filter doesn't do deliveries, it sets
> = up deliveries. The deliveries all happen at a later time, in separate
> = processes (in the case of local deliveries). It is then far too late to
> = use the results of (e.g. a pipe) delivery to affect the forward file.
> =
>
> This is what procmail is for. I'm working on setting up procmail as
> a secondary filter. Exim makes the quick and easy decisions, that
> are based on sender. Procmail to be used for filtering on content.
>
> E.g.
>
> :0 B:
> *Extractor Pro Bulk E- Mail Software
> /var/spool/exim/spam/Extractor
>
> :0 B:
> * -150^1 live sex
> * -150^1 adults only
> /var/spool/exim/spam/sex
>
> (So far the above hasn't caught anything yet.)
>
> I've been adding body dependent clauses as I figure out how to do it.
>
> I've also set up a local user called 'spam' and encourage my users to
> bounce any mail to spam.
I understand the above but what I wanted to do was to do a content check
for spam early on in my .forward and if it is real mail then process the
message with all my usual .forward rules (about 500 lines worth). I
didn't want to have to stop using .forward and switch to an external
program entirely - thats why I wanted a way to feed info back into exim
from the filter. I would like the content checking to be, somehow,
integrated into all the other filter rules of exim.
I appreciate that procmail, and probably other programs, could take over
the entire filtering/delivery job but I already know and like exim.
I've used just about every mail system in my time and I doubt it would
take me long to learn procmail - especially as it has such a good
reputation. But given how much exim can already do switching to
procmail for the final delivery step just to get content checking
somehow it just strikes me as a "not neat" way of doing things.
> (I like procmail because it's so paranoid about file locks. I can have
> two mail servers, one making delivery to nfs mounted spools, with
> reasonable confidence they won't clobber the users mail. If only elm
> were so considerate.)
That was another concern. I'm happy that I have exim and all my other
mail programs (netscape, mail, mush,...) locking correctly. Testing out
another one didn't sound like fun.
Lee
--
Lee McLoughlin. Phone: +44 171 594 8388
IC-Parc, Imperial College, Fax: +44 171 594 8432
South Kensington, London. SW7 2AZ. UK. Email: lmjm@???
--
*** Exim information can be found at
http://www.exim.org/ ***
