Re: OT - How to test procmail on existing mailbox


Andrew Robinson wrote:
I want to use fetchmail and procmail to download and sort my email.
I am in the initial testing phase. I've downloaded a bunch of mail
to my system mailbox with fetchmail. I have written some recipes for
procmail. Can I get procmail to run against the mail already
downloaded in /var/spool/mail/andrew? If so, how?

Something like 'formail -s procmail < /path/to/mailbox' is close to
what you are looking for.

I was going to post something similar...having seen this has already been
posted, though, I thought I'd make one suggestion:

Instead of running it in the method noted above, I usually run:

cp /path/to/mailbox ~ (copy my mailbox to my homedir)
cat /dev/null > /path/to/mailbox (clear out the contents of my main inbox)
formail -s procmail < ~/mailbox (process the copy)
rm ~/mailbox (once satisfied with the results)

The reasoning behind this is that, if you use the originally posted
method, anything that would normally wind up in your inbox, and not be
filtered into other folders, would wind up being duplicated in your inbox.

By copying off the main inbox spool file (usually /var/spool/username) to
another location, clearing out the main inbox spool file, and then running
it through procmail, you only get, in your inbox, what you want in your
inbox, and the rest gets filtered via procmail.
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