Fight spam with procmail

By Joshua Drake, LinuxWorld.com |  Software Add a new comment

Q: I use sendmail and a POP mail server on a Linux box. I am desperately looking for a way to filter incoming messages processed by sendmail based on their subject names and enclosure names. I would like to do this to filter spam and potentially dangerous viruses.


A: I'm not sure if you are talking about the MTA (Mail Transfer Agent, aka sendmail) or the MUA (Mail User Agent, aka Netscape Mail). However, there are solutions for both. Most graphical clients have built-in filtering that you can use.



On the server side, you can use a program called procmail. Procmail is installed by default on most Linux systems, and can be used system-wide or user by user. Procmail is a powerful program that uses recipes to define filtering mechanisms that result in certain actions.

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