another couple of questions:
1. what would I have to do to teach my system to place my
/var/spool/mail/stefano mbox file into my $HOME/Mail directory?
2. if I avoid to set the DEFAULT directive in .procmailrc, in
principle I would not have to care about the location of my "mbox"
file, right?
So, the interest in moving the mbox file from /var/spool/mail into
$HOME/Mail is "simply" because of quotas... right ? In addition, I would add another advantage in doing what you
suggest. When I moved from 9.0 to 9.1, I backed up a lot of
things (including my $HOME) but, for some strange reason, I
forgot to backup /var/spool/mail....
So, when I restarted my 9.1 system, I lost all mails that where
still in the default inbox.... this would have never ghappened if
it was under HOME...
So, one reason more to learn how to "safely" move this file under
HOME.
3. I heard other people talking good things about courier-imap.
On the other hand, MDK still provide UW as a default.
What is your point of view? Which are the advantages/disadvantages
of one package versus the other ?Thanks a lot. Best regards /stefano
Todd Lyons wrote:
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Stefano Pogliani wanted us to know:
Todd,
thanks for the reply
Bringing it back on the mailing list as others might be able to benefit from this and I charge for consulting.
1. well, I do not know what UW is but I suppose is the IMAP program I
am using by default, right ?
If you do 'rpm -qa imap*' and it shows you something like imap-2002a or similar. That is the UW Imap server (which can also do pop by the way).
2. so, the MAILDIR directive simply tells WHERE the OTHER mailboxes
(what I called "my IMAP folders" are stored).
IS this correct ?
Yes.
3. In some sample config, I saw a DEFAULT directive which was
something like =$MAILDIR/mbox.
Since I do not have this "mbox" but I have the
"/var/spool/mail/stefano" one, my question was "how can I set the
DEFAULT to point to my /var/spool.... file".
You are trying to get it to do something that it is not intended to do. That default directive is a DIRECTORY whereas your /var/spool/mail/username mbox is a single FILE. See, each individual mailbox folder is a single file and they all reside in $HOME/mail by default, except for the INBOX which is the /var/spool/mail/username file.
At this point, my advice to you is to quit trying to do it your own way and conform to the standard. It will make it much easier to do it. Though your way is not wrong, it's technically complicated. An additional benefit is in the case of an ISP who is offering specific mailbox sizes. If you implement quotas, it's very easy to enforce them on the home directories. It can be done on /var as well, but it gets complicated because so many processes write things there, not just users' mail.
From what you write at the end of your mail, this is implicit, so
that if I do not specify this directive, PROCMAIL already knows
what to do with mails that do not match any filter
Correct. They get appended to /var/spool/mail/username.
4. My "Mandrake Export" folder is, actually, deep in a hierarchy.
From a filesystem point of view it is in
/home/stefano/Mail/Linux/Mandrake/Expert_4
How do I describe this nested folder in the procmail rule ?
It's not intended to be used that way, but it can be. Just put for the
folder name:
Linux/Mandrake/Expert_4
The default path of $HOME/Mail/ is automatically prepended to it.
- -- Blue skies... Todd Public key: http://www.mrball.net/todd.asc
$pi = 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105; # from memory --springgraph.pl
Linux kernel 2.4.19-24mdk 5 users, load average: 1.12, 1.51, 1.29
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