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E-Mail - Using pmproto
Important Note: The information contained in this article is
still accurate with regards to the pmproto software. However, pmproto
itself is obsolete, as all pair servers have been converted to
My pair Account Control Center.
Pmproto will continue to function, and be available, for the foreseeable
future. We do recommend that all new mail recipes should be set up as
described on the e-mail recipes
documentation page.
pmproto is pair Networks' custom generator for setting up advanced mail forwarding.
The pmproto program itself does not process mail, but it sets up configuration
files (named .forward and .procmailrc) that allow the advanced mail-processing
package procmail to handle
mail in the manner you wish.
pmproto works by processing a special file of directives that you place in the
home directory (/usr/home/username) of your account. This file is named
.mailproto, and it controls how pmproto sets up your mail processing.
While you may upload this file to your account via
FTP, you'll need to connect to the account via
Telnet/SSH in order to run the
pmproto program. For this reason, a Basic Account or higher is required.
After you have created a .mailproto file that suits your needs, you must
connect to the account via Telnet/SSH
and use the pmproto command. This is accomplished by simply typing
`pmproto` (with no quotes) after you've logged in, and hitting return. You
should see output like the following:
username@server% pmproto
Processing /usr/home/username/.mailproto...
done.
username@server%
If you do not see this output, make sure that your .mailproto file is in your
home directory. If it is, and you still are having problems, contact
support@pair.com.
The following is a sample .mailproto file that addresses each of pmproto's
capabilities:
SAFETY
RESPOND sales salesinfo.txt COPY
FORWARD To sales bob@example.com
FOLDER To info infofile
DISCARD From evilspammer
If used, this command should come first. It saves a copy of all incoming mail to a file
in your home directory, named SavedMail. This directive should be used only while
experimenting with various forward options (to make sure no mail is accidentally discarded),
and is not intended for prolonged use.
This command takes mail sent to "sales", and forwards it on to bob@example.com. Please see the article on mail forwarding for more information.
This command takes mail sent to "sales", autoresponds to the sender with the file "salesinfo.txt" from your home directory, and saves
a copy in your mailbox. Please see the article on setting up autoresponders for
detailed information.
This command takes mail sent to an address, and saves it in a folder in your home directory.
In this case, it takes mail sent to "info", and saves it in the file named "infofile" in your
home directory .
This is similar to the action of the SAFETY directive, but allows you to specify which
mail should be saved, and also the name of the file it is saved to.
With this command, you can substitute "From" for "To", in order to folder mails that are
from certain addresses, rather than to an address. This is useful, for instance, to
separate out mail from mailing lists.
This command is similar to FOLDER. It takes mail sent to an address, and saves it to your default
mail spool (inbox). In this case it would save out mail sent to "webmaster" to /var/mail/USERNAME.
This command is useful in conjunction with DISCARD. If you only use a few addresses in your
virtual domain, you can MBOX the addresses that you want to keep and DISCARD everything else
so as to avoid unwanted mails.
With this command, you can substitute "From" for "To", in order to save out mails that are
from certain addresses, rather than to an address.
This command takes mail whose sender matches a certain pattern ("evilspammer", in the
example above) and discards it. No copy of the mail is received by your mailbox. Because
no copy of the mail is kept, this command should be used very carefully. It is probably most
useful to filter out those who repeatedly send you unsolicited e-mail ("Spam").
With this command, you can also substitute "To" for "From", in order to discard mails based on what address they are coming to, rather than were they were sent from.
It is important to note that all matching done on mail is "wild-card" style. Matching is case insensitive ("hello" matches "HeLLo"), and is done on the entire e-mail address.
Because matching is done on the entire address, you must take care to make sure you are matching on unique strings. The classic example involves trying to forward based on a username that is a subset of your domain name. That is, trying to forward mail addressed to "info", when your domain is "information.com". Because "info" is a substring of "information.com", it will match all incoming mail to the domain, which is probably not your intent.
In such cases, you can make the distinction by using a full address to match, like:
FORWARD To info@information.com bob@example.com
In order to activate changes to your .mailproto file, you must make sure
to rerun pmproto after each time you make changes to it. Also, it is important not to delete the
two files pmproto creates, .forward and .procmailrc, as without these files your
mail forwarding will not work. If you accidentally delete or damage either of those files, simply
rerun pmproto and they will be recreated.
Please provide
feedback on this article.
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