UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a .procmailrc file that includes a file named .rc.phplist. Within .rc.phplist is the following set of recipes:

:0
* $RECIP ?? ^^phplist@$DOMAIN
{
# Has this message already been sent? If so, delete it.
:0h
* ^X-Mailing-List:
/dev/null

:0cw
phplist/queue/.

:0
|/usr/local/bin/php -f /home/myuser/scripts/sendlist.php >> /home/myuser/scripts/sendlist.log
}

This handles all messages addressed to phplist@mydomain.org. The sendlist.php script distributes the messages in the queue folder to members of a discussion mailing list. It checks to see if it is already running and exits if so. The script will stop running when all messages in the queue folder have been sent. This recipe will restart it when a new message comes in.

Later in the parent .procmailrc file is this recipe:

:0
* $RECIP ?? ^^phplist@$DOMAIN
{
:0
!myemail@anotherdomain.net
}

Now it's my understanding that the recipe in .rc.phplist should stop procmail from processing the message. And if the message is plain text, that's just what happens. What's weird is that an HTML message causes *all* the recipes to be executed, even the one in .procmailrc.

Why???

Just for fun, what happens if you replace the included procmail file in .procmailrc with the actual recipes?

Do you get the same unexpected results?

Yes, the same thing happens.

Thanks for humoring me

Could you please put the recipies in one file and post them (you can use the quote or code tags, BTW), so I can try it here. I use many procmail recipes, but I'm no procmailrc expert.

Also, did you turn on more debugging in your procmailrc file? Higher levels of debugging really help in these situations. Perhaps you could post the applicable section of a verbose log?

VERBOSE=yes

Here are two procmail logging flags:

# Turn off extra words in log file set to yes for debugging
VERBOSE=yes

# For debugging uncomment this line
LOGABSTRACT=all

This is on a shared web host. I'm not sure I have access to the log.

In any case, I modified the recipe to this:

Code:

:0
* $RECIP ?? ^^phplist@$DOMAIN
{
  # Has this message already been sent? If so, delete it.
  :0h
  * ^X-Mailing-List:
  /dev/null

  :0
  phplist/queue/.

  #:0
  #|/usr/local/bin/php -f /home/myuser/scripts/sendlist.php >> /home/myuser/scripts/sendlist.log
}

And now delivery stops as expected. So it appears that something about calling my PHP script is causing this. I thought calling any program would stop delivery.... why does it seem to be conditional with this script?

Dear elmonty,

You should be able to specify the procmail log location in your procmailrc file at any place in the recipe chain with:

LOGFILE=/your/path/to/your/area/procmail.log

I'll take a look at the script soon.