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pythonemailprocmail

Want procmail to run a custom python script, everytime a new mail shows up

I have a pretty usual requirement with procmail but I am unable to get the results somehow. I have procmailrc file with this content:

:0
* ^To.*@myhost
| /usr/bin/python /work/scripts/privilege_emails_forward.py

Wherein my custom python script(privilege_emails_forward.py) will be scanning through the email currently received and do some operations on the mail content. But I am unable to get the script getting executed at the first shot(let alone scanning through the mail content).

  • Is this a correct way of invoking an external program(python) as soon as new mail arrives?
  • And how does my python program(privilege_emails_forward.py) will receive the mail as input? I mean as sys.argv or stdin????
Solution

  • That is just fine, just put fw after :0 (:0 fw). Your python program will receive the mail on stdin. You have to 'echo' the possibly transformed mail on stdout.

    fw means:

    • f Consider the pipe as a filter.
    • w Wait for the filter or program to finish and check its exitcode (normally ignored); if the filter is unsuccessful, then the text will not have been filtered.

    My SPAM checker (bogofilter) just works like that. It adds headers and later procmail-rules do something depending on these headers.