need help about sendmail

[nilesh vaghela]

try this.

http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/copy-out.html

 Copying all mail to Archive *The following is probably made obsolete by this
<http://www.technoids.org/procmailfilter.html>.[note added 13July2005*

One of the most common questions on comp.mail.sendmail is "How do I get
sendmail to archive copies of outgoing mail". This question is usually left
unanswered, as the more influential members of the sendmail community think
that is an improper action. They are apparently thinking of an ISP snooping
on its customers. I expect the more likely case is a business such as a
brokerage which is legally required to keep copies of correspondence, for
understandable reasons.

Some mailers make this easy. Postfix has "bcc: always" option that solves
this problem with a single request.

Anthony C Howe has posted milter-bcc
<http://www.milter.info/milter-bcc/index.shtml> which appears to duplicate
the Postfix ability in Sendmail. See also
Synonym<http://www.modulo.ro/synonym/>from Modulo Consulting.

The Sendmail FAQ does offer three suggestions for doing this, but except for
one, they require extensive modification to sendmail, and it is clear that
they are not offered in the expectation that they will be implemented.

In the FAQ, and in the newsgroup, it is also suggested that Procmail can do
this. Most people making this suggestion are merely confused, since if you
install procmail as documented, it only sees incoming mail. Since it never
sees outgoing mail, it isn't going to be able to save copies. However it
turns out that there is a way to install procmail to process outgoing mail.
I haven't tried it myself, but I did track down the available instructions,
and have copied them below. There is obviously room for someone to actually
try to document this in simple terms for sendmail users of less than guru
status. As a start, one could consult this
<http://www.technoids.org/procmailfilter.html>. [Note added September 2005 -
Procmail scanning of outbound mail has apparently been added to Sendmail, if
not to the FAQ. See here <http://www.sendmail.org/m4/mailers.html>.

The sendmail FAQ includes a reference to a comp.mail.sendmail posting using
only * 33AA593A.4B701C3F at syntegra.nl * for the citation. While some users
might know to go to the Google Groups "Advanced Search" page, others may
not. I expect this page will come up for anyone searching in the Google web
engine for that message-id, thus letting the uninitiated see the posting
referred to.


Viewing message <33AA593A.4B701C3F at syntegra.nl>


From: Homme Bitter (H.Bitter at syntegra dotte nl)
Subject: Solution for copying all mail to archive
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
View: (This is the only article in this thread) | Original Format
Date: 1997/06/20


It took me some time, but,
I have it solved...
This can also be used as a general purpose mailfilter too, excellent for
detecting spam and other unpleasant things.

Solution:

Let sendmail map everything through procmail, let procmail do to your
mail whatever you want with it and map it back.

That was the easy part...
Now for the syntax.

Add some local rules to your m4 config file ( use m4, ALWAYS ! ).

MAILER(`procmail')dnl
LOCAL_RULE_0
R$*<@$*.procmail>$* $1@<$2>$3 map back of procmail copy
LOCAL_RULE_0
R$*<@$+>$* $#procmail $@/etc/procmailrc $:$1@$2procmail$3 send all
external mail to procmail

this will send all mail through procmail using the file /etc/procmailrc
as the config file for procmail.

I use this one:

:0 c:
/var/mail/archive

Once I found this all out ( with a little help, I might add ). it all
seemed so simple....

Maybe this would be a good item to add to the faq, since it is a general
purpose add on for sendmail that can be used for many useful purposes.

Known problems:
Sending to a top leve domain doesn't work, it somehow looses a dot, but
then again, there are no mailaddresses in toplevedomains, to my
knowledge, so, who cares.
This version only works for mail wit a @ sign in the address, it's kind
of hard to split up an address that consists of only one string.

Good luck, I hope the mail-commutity is happy with this.

Homme





 Also see this message:
From: Per Hedeland (per at hedeland.org)
Subject: Re: Using procmail to archive outbound fails - buildaddr: no user
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
View this article only
Date: 2002-04-13 03:30:06 PST


In article <m1vgawb6x8.fsf at reader.newsguy.com> Harry Putnam
<reader at newsguy.com> writes:
>
> MAILER(`procmail')dnl
> LOCAL_RULE_0
> R$*<@$*.procmail>$* $1@<$2>$3 map back of procmail copy
> LOCAL_RULE_0
> R$*<@$+>$* $#procmail $@/etc/procmailrc $:$1@$2procmail$3 send
all
> external mail to procmail
>
>After first getting the tabs right (I think), I inserted the above
>into my.mc and generated sendmail.cf

You *didn't* get the tabs right - it should be like this (no need for
multiple LOCAL_RULE_0 directives), where I have used <TAB> instead of
actual tab(s):

LOCAL_RULE_0
R$*<@$*.procmail>$*<TAB>$1@<$2>$3<TAB>map back of
procmail copy
R$*<@$+>$*<TAB>$#procmail $@/etc/procmailrc
$:$1@$2procmail$3<TAB>send all
external mail to procmail

Btw, it's probably better to do this with a milter these days.

--Per Hedeland
per at hedeland.org
 --
Nilesh Vaghela