NAMEprocmail - Advanced mail filtering for Virtual Servers SYNOPSISprocmail is a program especially suited to parsing mail files and delivering mail to certain locations based on the contents of the email message. This document describes how to install procmail as your local delivery agent for sendmail and use it to filter spam and viruses server-wide (i.e., for all mail accounts) without using .forward files. DESCRIPTIONMany people are weary of receiving copies of the latest Windows virus du jour. SirCam and a host of VB and Word macro viruses have made us afraid to even check our mail for fear of a new, horrible virus that will delete our hard drive. Further, UCE (unsolicited commercial email) or spam regularly consumes 50% of our mail quota at any given moment, wasting our time, money and server resources. What can we do about this? One respectable and simple solution is to use procmail as our local delivery agent. procmail can replace /bin/imail in our sendmail.cf file as the local delivery agent. /bin/imail typically takes a message and appends it to the mail file for you to later view using POP or IMAP. With procmail, the incoming message is first passed through a series of ``recipes'' which you specify, telling procmail what to do with the message. Once all of the recipes have been processed, mail is delivered as usual to your mailbox. PROCMAIL AS THE LOCAL DELIVERY AGENTUsing procmail as the local delivery agent on your Virtual Server requires three steps:
The remainder of this document describes these steps. 1) Install procmail on your Virtual ServerTelnet or SSH to your Virtual Server. Then, to install procmail on your server, simply type: server% vinstall procmail This will unpack procmail and its helper programs in to ~/usr/local/bin. 2) Configure sendmail to use procmail as the local mail delivery agentTo install the sendmail configuration files, type: server% vinstall sendmail at your server prompt. Once the sendmail configuration files have been installed, change your working directory to ~/usr/local/sendmail/cf/cf: server% cd ~/usr/local/sendmail/cf/cf Now copy the file default-procmail-lda.cf to your ~/etc directory: server% cp -p default-procmail-lda.cf ~/etc server% cd ~/etc Let's backup our old sendmail.cf file just in case we need to revert to it: server% cp -p sendmail.cf sendmail.cf-<date> where <date> is something like '010910'. Now let's move our new sendmail configuration file into place for sendmail to use: server cp -fp default-procmail-lda.cf sendmail.cf We should make sure we still receive mail: server% virtual mail -s test root hi ^D server% tail -n 2 ~/var/log/messages <XX>Sep 10 14:31:24 sendmail[24923]: f8AKVOg24923: from=server, size=27, \ class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200109102031.f8AKVOg24923@server.com>, \ relay=server@localhost <XX>Sep 10 14:31:25 sendmail[24925]: f8AKVOg24923: to=server, ctladdr=server \ (1234/100), delay=00:00:01, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=30027, \ dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent and there's the message we just sent. 3) Configure procmail to filter viruses and spam on your systemNow that procmail is delivering our local mail, make a server-wide procmailrc file located in ~/etc/procmailrc: server% pwd /usr/home/server/etc Edit procmailrc with your favorite editor (~/etc/procmailrc probably doesn't exist; you're creating it now); make it look something like this: VERBOSE=off LOGABSTRACT=yes LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log COMSAT=no ## this will catch the SirCam virus (or any email message that ## discusses the SirCam virus payload ;o) :0B: * (in order to have your advice|que me des tu punto de vista) /dev/null ## clean environment (this gets passed on to users) VERBOSE= LOGABSTRACT= LOGFILE= COMSAT= If you don't want to risk any accidentally lost mail, send the mail to a real file instead (this file will grow quickly, so check its size often): :0B: * (in order to have your advice|que me des tu punto de vista) /var/log/sircam We can add some recipes to catch common spam content: LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log.spam ## subject lines with 'adv' or 'advertisement' or some other variation :0: * ^Subject: \[?ADV.*\]? /var/log/spam ## anyone who needs to invoke the spam law is a spammer :0B: * (section|s\.) ?1618 /var/log/spam ## yes it is... :0B: * This is not SPAM /var/log/spam Now our ~/etc/procmailrc file looks like this: VERBOSE=off LOGABSTRACT=yes COMSAT=no LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log.sircam ## this will catch the SirCam virus (or any email message that ## discusses the SirCam virus payload ;o) :0B: * (in order to have your advice|que me des tu punto de vista) /var/log/sircam LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log.spam ## subject lines with 'adv' or 'advertisement' or some other variation :0: * ^Subject: \[?ADV.*\]? /var/log/spam ## anyone who needs to invoke the spam law is a spammer :0B: * (section|s\.) ?1618 /var/log/spam ## yes it is... :0B: * This is not SPAM /var/log/spam ## clean environment (this gets passed on to users) VERBOSE= LOGABSTRACT= LOGFILE= COMSAT= Watch the size of ~/var/log/spam and ~/var/log/spam.log; consider installing some sort of file rotation program to manage them like savelogs. Test your filter by sending an email message to any user on the Virtual Server. The message should contain a line in the body of the message 'in order to have your advice'. The message will be stored in ~/var/log/sircam (or deleted if you use /dev/null for your mailbox) and a three line entry made in ~/var/log/procmail.log.sircam containing whom the message was from, the subject line and size of the message, and where the message was stored. Now what?Now you're on your own (sort of). You should read the following man pages:
CAVEATS
SEE ALSOprocmail(1), procmailrc(5), procmailex(5), procmailsc(5), AUTHORScott Wiersdorf <scott@perlcode.org> COPYRIGHTCopyright (c) 2001 Scott Wiersdorf. This document may not be duplicated in any form without prior written consent of the author or his employer. Email: support@speedex.ne.jp
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