UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am looking for information on how to process mail using a cron job. The email server is a hosted ISP, so I simply have a POP connection to the mailbox.

Specifically, I want to fire a cron job at {x} time and have pine, mail, mailx, or some other suitable mail client utility process the current POP mail inbox.

Part A is my desire to automatically search for and move some log files to a specific file/folder by grepping out part of the subject line.

Part B might be solved better with some spam filtering tool, but I want to automatically delete "spam" email from the mailbox on a scheduled basis. I will be using a "friends" list to filter out any mail domain not specifically authorized to send email to this account.

So, can anyone point me in the direction of how to read / process the mail box using something like mailx in a script such that I can accomplish A & B above.

Thanks,
CM

It might be easier to use an LDA (local delivery agent), like procmail. You can check to see if your ISP uses procmail and, if so, create a local .procmailrc file to accomplish your tasks.


Reference:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...-procmail.html