Subject: replacement for "filter"?

From: David Lee <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 16:31:04 +0000 (GMT)

Our email system has evolved over the years, and includes components from
a variety of sources.  The current state of our email spool machines is:
  OS: Solaris 2.6, 2.7
  sendmail: public domain 8.9.x (using "/bin/mail" for "Mlocal")
  IMAP: Washington imap-4.6
  POP3: Qualcomm
  Elm: (ancient!)
  filter: (from Elm above)

We are trying to overhaul and rationalise it.  In particular we want to
restructure the "/var/mail" spool area which is currently many thousand
entries and consequently very inefficient.  Thus the path to a user's
spool file will be non-default.

I am planning:
o  to continue to use Washington imap (4.7b);
o  to change the POP to Washington's ipop3 (from imap-4.7b distibution)
o  to use "tmail" from Washington imap-utils for sendmail delivery.

The tests have gone very well.

Because almost all user-access is now via POP or IMAP, there is only a
small residual amount of file/NFS-based access.  (Yes, we know of the
dangers of NFS which is why we have always deprecated it!)  We intend to
remove this final file/NFS access, such as Elm, so that's OK for us (and
we have warned the users!).

The remaining problem, however, is the "filter" program (from Elm), which
seems to be in widespread use with our users.  (If we were starting again,
we would only use "procmail" and not "filter", but that is not our given
starting point...).  And "filter" wants to act directly on the user's file
in "/var/mail".  Not nice.

Is there a program which, from the user perspective, emulates "filter",
but behind the scenes use c-client?  Any alternative solutions (as
pain-free as possible for users, and preferably of curtailed pain for me)?

-- 

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
:  Systems Programmer                       Computer Centre       :
:                                           University of Durham  :
:  http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dcl0tdl            South Road            :
:                                           Durham                :
:  Phone: +44 191 374 2882                  U.K.                  :

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