In order to use Procmail, "all" you need is a text file named
.procmailrc in your home directory
(Note the leading dot in the filename), containing any number of
"recipes" that sequentially defines how you want procmail
to handle your email. Processing stops after the first matching recipe.
If there is no matching recipe, the message goes into
your default mailbox.
A recipe consists of a line of flags, followed by any number of lines
of matching criteria, followed by one action line,
which is normally a file name, where you want the matching message stored,
(or, the special file named /dev/null used to discard a message),
and a blank line to seperate one recipe from the next.
The flags start with :0 -the matching criteria
start with a star, * and is followed by a
"regular expression", which is the most tricky part.
If the action line doesn't start with a slash, /,
it is interpreted as the name of a file in your home directory.
To make life easier for users who are unfamiliar with the cryptic notations
of procmail recipes, Vance Kochenderfer has made a program that will
assist you in setting up a basic .procmailrc to filter out
spam, based on special headers inserted into each message, by the
SpamAssassin program.
To run this program, enter /nyx/projects/bin/spamfilter
on a command line (or top,c,m,sspf in the menus).
Another option is, to incorporate ready-made recipes from
/nyx/lib/procmail into your
own .procmailrc, using the INCLUDERC variable, e.g.,
INCLUDERC=/nyx/lib/procmail/virus.rc
which is supposed to filter out most messages with executable
attachments (whether they are viral or not).
If you feel like learning more about procmail, it would be a good idea
to start by browsing through the online man-page for procmailrc
and procmailex. For your convenience, these are available
via Lynx, if you run the program /nyx/projects/cmaarbj/bin/htman
Once you have understood the basics, the quickreference, available from
procmail -h is very handy.
There is a lot of Nyx-specific tips in the local newsgroups
nyx.help and nyx.misc
and many online tutorials available on the Internet, but the tutorials tend
to be even longer than the man-pages, and two warnings seem to be appropriate:
Do not pay attention to the explanations about setting up
a .forward file, as it isn't necessary, and
do not try to use any tips about bouncing spam.