Subject: Once more: "send back"/autoreply

From: Diethard Ohrt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 17:29:07 +0100 (MET)

I already mailed this to the list -- the problem persists:
I wanted to test the "automatically send back" feature from the procmailex
man pages, but it doesn't work at all.

First, see my .procmailrc:
=====
# A sample small $HOME/.procmailrc from the procmail(1) man pages
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/vue/bin:/users/ohrt/bin:/users/ohrt/usr/bin
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
# DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/mbox/default   -- completely optional
LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/from   #recommended
VERBOSE=yes

:0:
* ^TOpine-info
PineInfo

:0:
* ^Subject:.*ProcmailLock
lockTest

:0
* ^From +burg
burgMail

:0 chb
* !^From +ohrt
* !^Subject:.*Re:
* !^FROM_DAEMON
* ^Subject:.*retrieve
| (formail -r ; echo "AUTOANSWERED\n" ; cat $MAILDIR/info_file) | $SENDMAIL -oitrue -t

:0
* ^Subject:.*Flame
/dev/null
=====

-- and the .forward:

"|IFS=' '&&p=/users/ohrt/usr/bin/procmail&&test -f $p&&exec $p -Yf-||exit 75 #ohrt"
=====

Compared to actual .procmailrc, I made these changes:

* ^From:.*burg
[...]
:0 chb
* !^Subject:.*Re:
* !^FROM_DAEMON
* ^Subject:.*retrieve
[...]

Then I tried:

1) mailx -s "retrieve" ohrt

a) as user "burg" (on the same host)

result:
   - "burg" gets a reply, but without the "info_file".
   - _no_entry_ in the log file ("from" in .procmailrc)
   - _no_entry_ in burgMail, as suggested by .procmailrc

b) as myself, user "ohrt"

result:
   - I get the "info_file".
   - log file:
   [...]
procmail: Match on "^Subject:.*retrieve"
procmail: Executing " (formail -r ; echo "AUTOANSWERED\n" ; cat $MAILDIR/info_file) | $SENDMAIL -oitrue -t"
   [...]

2) mailx -s "nosub" ohrt
a) "burg": as 1)a)
b) "ohrt":
   [...]
procmail: Match on ! "^Subject:.*Re:"
procmail: Match on ! "(^(Precedence:.*(junk|bulk|[...]
   [...]
procmail: No match on "^Subject:.*retrieve"
   [...]

3) in .procmailrc: changed line to
* ^From +burg

mailx -s "retrieve" ohrt
a) "burg": as 1)a)
b) "ohrt": as 1)b)

mailx -s "nosub" ohrt
same as 2)

Original .procmailrc, i.e.:

:0 chb
* !^From +ohrt
* !^Subject:.*Re:
* !^FROM_DAEMON
* ^Subject:.*retrieve

1) "burg": same as above
2) as myself: just "No match on ..." -- so, no action ...

Well, after one day of experimenting it seems that I DO NOT GET ANY MAIL from
anybody into my mailbox, except from me ...
What am I doing wrong?
Do I have to define any default target? According to the man pages, this is
superfluous ("completely optional") ...

Please help ...

Cheers,
Diti
      _/_/    _/    _/  _/_/_/    _/_/_/_/                  _  __------ \
   _/    _/  _/    _/  _/    _/     _/                     | --          \
  _/    _/  _/_/_/_/  _/_/_/       _/                     |_              \
 _/    _/  _/    _/  _/   _/      _/                        | ___-\   o   |
  _/_/    _/    _/  _/    _/     _/                        /_/     |      |
                                                                    |__---|
Diethard Ohrt                     Steiermark - das gruene Herz Oesterreichs
SIEMENS AG / PSE TMN G1                 Styria - the green heart of Austria
A-8054 Graz     Austria                   Styrie - le coeur vert d'Autriche
===========================================================================

---

From: [email-masked] (Rick Troxel)
Date: 19 Nov 1996 20:49:32 GMT

In article
<[email-masked]>
[email-masked] (Diethard Ohrt) writes:

Perhaps this will be a clue.  I just tried to respond to you directly,
and I got a bounce stating

mail: cannot append to /var/mail/ohrt
mail: cannot create dead.letter
550 <[email-masked]>... Insufficient permission

From here it looks like a problem with your mail delivery agent:
procmail, /bin/mail, or whatever.

Hope it helps,
--
   Rick Troxel     [email-masked]     [email-masked]
     http://www.dc-sage.org/bios/rick_troxel  301/435-2983
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
All effort and exertion put forth by man from the fullness of his
heart is worship, if it  is prompted  by the  highest motives and
the will to do service to humanity.                 --Abdu'l-Baha

---

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 19:36:56 -0500

On 13 Nov 1996, Diethard Ohrt wrote:

> I already mailed this to the list -- the problem persists: [...]

    By "the list" do you mean the procmail mailing list, where such
questions are dealt which in depth?  If not, that is where your question
really belongs, because this is the Pine newsgroup, not a procmail
group.  People here may in fact use procmail, but because this is not a
procmail group you may or may not get a knowledgeable answer to your
inquiry.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart