[clug] Mail server stuff.

Rasjid Wilcox rasjidw at openminddev.net
Wed Oct 13 13:46:48 GMT 2004


I know this is an old thread, but I've been away for a bit.

On Tuesday 14 September 2004 23:01, Michael Still wrote:
> Tony and Robyn Lewis wrote:
> > procmail might be more suited to your needs, Paul, especially if you're
> > limited to only having the catch-all account for the ISP.  I'm guessing
> > here, but you might use fetchmail to get the mail, and then "somehow"
> > submit it to procmail, which could split it into different users'
> > mailboxes on your machine.
>
> I did just this a while back, and it caused me pain with mailling lists
> who don't include the recipient in the To field in the headers. This is
> a surprising number of mailling lists, which is quite annoying.

This is a fundamental limitation of using multi-drop mail boxes.  The *only* 
reliable solution that I am aware of is if the ISP places some kind of 
'X-Envelope-To' header in the mail.  Some ISPs do this automatically (TPG for 
example certainly did, and probably still does).  Some ISPs may enable this 
upon request.  Others may have no interest.

Without some kind entry in the mail headers to record the original mail 
envelope, it is not possible for fetchmail to accurately work out what to do.  
In addition to mailing lists which can cause serious problems, BCC'ed mail 
will *never* get delivered to the intended recipient without an 
'X-Envelope-To' type header being used.

See the fetchmail man page 'THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES' for more 
info.

Cheers,

Rasjid.

-- 
Rasjid Wilcox
Canberra, Australia (UTC +10 hrs)
http://www.openminddev.net



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