Re: Seeking clarification about mail program interaction

[ajlewis2@intac.com]

In linux.debian.user, you wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> Now that I have my printer running properly, I'm trying to tackle the
> problem of mail delivery. I've installed fetchmail, procmail, and exim, but
> I have yet to make them interact properly. For the moment I am using
> ~getmail~ (a fetchmail replacement) to poll my ISP and deliver my mail in a
> timely manner. I then read it from mutt and can send (obviously).
> 
> I'd like to be able to use the benefits of procmail though, so I thought I'd
> get some clarification on the actual process involved. This is what I
> understand would happen:
> 
> 1. fetchmail (currently getmail) retrieves mail from ISP and hold it locally
> 2. procmail ~should~ then sort it according to recipes that I write
> 3. mutt reads the mail from any and ~all~ folders / mbox's that have been
> effected by the sorting
> 
> My difficulty is that the few times I have tested fetchmail, it retrieves
> and then deletes ~all~ mail not expressly addressed to
> "cmasters@nbnet.nb.ca". This means that mail from lists (including this one)
> is dropped before I am able to read it. It doesn't remain on my ISP's
> server, it just get dropped. I had thought that directing fetchmail to refer
> to procmail (ala the mda command) that sorting (~any~ pre-read deletion)
> would be done through procmail.

I'm thinking that fetchmail is not deleting the mail, but to make sure you
can temporarily turn off procmail.  An easy way to do that is to rename the
~/.procmail directory.  Just do 'mv .procmail off.procmail' and then use
'fetchmail -k' to make sure that the mail stays on the server in case it is
lost.  See if messages to the list come into your inbox.

I suspect the problem is either in the way the recipes are written or in
getmail/exim.  I don't really know enough about this to explain it, but I'm
running fetchmail, procmail, exim.

Anita