Subject: procmail and sendmail installation q

From: Chadwick A. Dubuque <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 1995 17:44:15 -0600 (CST)

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I'm interested in installing procmail and SmartList to create a few mailing
lists on my machine.

a) It is a NextStep machine with a direct connection to the internet.
b) I have root access.

So, my question is, why should I add the "Mprocmail" line (in the man page,
examples) in my sendmail.cf if I have already altered the "Mlocal" line to
point to procmail? Is the redundancy necessary for SmartList? What added
functionality does the "Mprocmail" line add?

Also, I have a question about my "Mlocal" line:

Mlocal, P=/usr/local/bin/procmail, F=lsSDFMhPfn, S=10, R=20, A=procmail -a
$h -d $u

was the suggested line to replace the original:

Mlocal, P=/bin/mail, F=rlsDFMmnP, S=10, R=20, A=mail -d $u

My question: What does the F= value mean/do, and should it be the same as it
was before?

- -- 
Chadwick A. Dubuque, [email-masked]           /^\
North Dakota State U. Ass'n for Computing Machinery Chairperson   <acm>
http://www.acm.ndsu.NoDak.edu/~cdubuque/  finger for PGP pub. key  \v/

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From: "Michael J. Corrigan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jan 1995 16:49:52 -0800

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You don't have to add it.  Mprocmail is not required for Smartlist. 

If you add it you could resolve addresses to it which allows you
to hook the mail into procmail scripts. A trivial example is say
you wanted to do "mailing to news": send messages to group.usenet,
revolve those in ruleset 0 to Mprocmail, and in the procmail script
it calls, do some header deletion (e.g. news does not like Received).
Of course there's other ways to do this same thing.
There's another example in the procmail man page.

The F= flags for Mlocal with procmail should not be the same as
those for Mlocal with /bin/mail.
F=  lsDSFMh nPf
F=     S  h   f  (procmail has extra S,h and f)
F= rlsD FM mnP   (mail has extra r and m)
F= r       m

l - mailer does final delivery - process return-receipt-to:
s - strip quotes (most mailers want this)
D - need Date: header (this is the key for turning on the sendmail.cf line
    H?D?Date: $a)
F - need From: header (key for H?F?From: in sendmail.cf)
M - need Message-Id: header (key for H?M?Message-Id: in sendmail.cf)
h - preserve host name upper/lower case (not too sure this is necessary)
n - sendmail doesn't need to add an From_ line for this mailer (/bin/mail
    procmail add it themselves)
P - need Return-Path: header (key for H?P?Return-Path: in sendmail.cf)

m - deliver to multiple recipients ok ( mailer can take a list of recipients
    on command line; procmail can't since it has to take on the UID of 
   the recipient to read their .procmailrc file, probably)

r - sendmail needs to add "-r sender" to the mailer call (probably for the
    initial From_ line)
f - sendmail needs to add "-f sender" to mailer call  (From_ line probably)

S - execute mailer as root (procmail changes uid to the user pretty soon
    though)

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen R. van den Berg)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 21:17:58 +0100

>F= rlsD FM mnP   (mail has extra r and m)

The recommendations in examples/advanced are just that, recommendations.
They partly look the way they look because it is the most optimal way
to start up procmail, and partly because they provide some redundance that
masquerades slight configuration errors (like forgetting to make
procmail setuid root).

Procmail usually runs just fine with the flags on your present /bin/mail
Mlocal entry.

>   the recipient to read their .procmailrc file, probably)

Procmail can take the 'm' flag as well.  The downside of this is that if
one of the multiple recipients causes the delivery to fail, sendmail has no
way of determining for which recipient the delivery failed (there is only
one exitcode).  So sendmail will send back a non-delivery notice for all
recipients.  The 'm' flag on the Mlocal mailer doesn't gain you much
performance anyway, so, all things considered, I recommend leaving it off.

-- 
Sincerely,                                  [email-masked]
           Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless).

This is a day for firm decisions!  Or is it?