Using Procmail   «Prev  Next»

Lesson 4Procmail recipes
ObjectiveDefine procmail recipes.

Procmail recipes (Linux Email)

Recipes are the dominant feature in procmail's configuration, because they describe how to process the email. Recipes use regular expressions[1] to match against an email's header or body content, and describe how to manipulate matched email.
procmail defines two types of recipes: delivering and non-delivering. Once an email matches the recipe's regular expression, or condition, delivering recipes save the email to a particular mail folder. Conversely, non-delivering recipes either give the email to an external program for further processing or allow procmail to process the email further. The Slide Show below shows a personal procmail configuration file.
Note: Your procmail configuration file should not be world-writeable. You should change the file's mode with
chmod 644 ~/.procmailrc
In the next lesson, you will compare recipe flags.

Maildrop is the successor to procmail in Red Hat

Question: Which email client was the successor to procmail in Red Hat Linux?
The email client that succeeded procmail in Red Hat Linux is called "maildrop." Maildrop is a Unix-based mail delivery agent that was developed as a replacement for procmail. It offers improved security features and better performance than its predecessor. One of the main advantages of maildrop over procmail is its ability to drop privileges and execute commands as the recipient user, rather than the delivery agent user. This feature makes it more secure and less prone to security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers.
Maildrop also offers more robust filtering capabilities than procmail, making it easier to manage and organize incoming emails. It supports complex filtering rules that can be based on various criteria, such as sender, recipient, subject, and message content. Overall, maildrop is a powerful and reliable email client that has become the default mail delivery agent in many Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux. Its improved security features and filtering capabilities make it an excellent choice for managing email on Unix-based systems.

Procmail Concepts - Quiz

Before you move to the next lesson, click the Quiz link below to test your understanding of procmail concepts.
Procmail Concepts - Quiz
[1]Regular expressions: A string expression that uses special metacharacters (wildcards, for example) to match zero or more strings. Regular expressions are the foundation for many Linux programs, including the UNIX command line file-matching routines (e.g., "ls myfile.*"), grep (e.g., "grep bar foo.txt"), and procmail.