I have a strange issue on my Debian server. I am receiving mails with Postfix and "Procmail" for the user notfall. After a mail was received, the script from Procmail should play an audio file. But it does not find any audio card. If I issue the command aplay -l interactively, I can see the existing audio cards: $ aplay -l **** Liste der Hardware-Geräte (PLAYBACK) **** Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 0: 92HD81B1X5 Analog [92HD81B1X5 Analog] Sub-Geräte: 1/1 Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0 Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Sub-Geräte: 1/1 Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0 Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1] Sub-Geräte: 1/1 Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0 Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2] Sub-Geräte: 1/1 Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0 The first one is the correct one: Karte 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], Gerät 0: 92HD81B1X5 Analog [92HD81B1X5 Analog] The script is as follows: $ cat alarm.sh #!/bin/bash aplay -l ffplay -nodisp -autoexit /home/notfall/beep.wav sleep 1 Whenever a new mail from ilo@pentest.internal is received, the script is executed, but I get the following errors in the procmail.log file: From ilo@pentest.internal Fri Jul 25 13:22:07 2025 Subject: =?utf-8?q?HPE=20iLO=20AlertMail=2D058=3A=20=28INFO=29=20AlertMail=20T Folder: /home/notfall/alarm.sh 2223 aplay: device_list:279: no soundcards found... ffplay version 7.1.1-1+b1 Copyright (c) 2003-2025 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 14 (Debian 14.2.0-19) configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version=1+b1 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu --arch=amd64 --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --disable-libmfx --disable-omx --enable-gnutls --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcdio --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libdav1d --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libglslang --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libmysofa --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopus --enable-librubberband --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzimg --enable-openal --enable-opencl --enable-opengl --disable-sndio --enable-libvpl --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdrm --enable-libiec61883 --enable-chromaprint --enable-frei0r --enable-ladspa --enable-libbluray --enable-libcaca --enable-libdvdnav --enable-libdvdread --enable-libjack --enable-libpulse --enable-librabbitmq --enable-librist --enable-libsrt --enable-libssh --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libx264 --enable-libzmq --enable-libzvbi --enable-lv2 --enable-sdl2 --enable-libplacebo --enable-librav1e --enable-pocketsphinx --enable-librsvg --enable-libjxl --enable-shared libavutil 59. 39.100 / 59. 39.100 libavcodec 61. 19.101 / 61. 19.101 libavformat 61. 7.100 / 61. 7.100 libavdevice 61. 3.100 / 61. 3.100 libavfilter 10. 4.100 / 10. 4.100 libswscale 8. 3.100 / 8. 3.100 libswresample 5. 3.100 / 5. 3.100 libpostproc 58. 3.100 / 58. 3.100 Input #0, wav, from '/home/notfall/beep.wav': 0KB sq= 0B Metadata: title : we5 Duration: 00:00:01.23, bitrate: 1411 kb/s Stream #0:0: Audio: pcm_s16le ( / 0x0001), 44100 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1411 kb/s ALSA lib confmisc.c:855:(parse_card) cannot find card '0' ALSA lib conf.c:5205:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_inum returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:422:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings ALSA lib conf.c:5205:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:1342:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name ALSA lib conf.c:5205:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib conf.c:5728:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2722:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default SDL_OpenAudio (2 channels, 44100 Hz): ALSA: Couldn't open audio device: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:855:(parse_card) cannot find card '0' ALSA lib conf.c:5205:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_inum returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:422:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings ALSA lib conf.c:5205:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:1342:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name ALSA lib conf.c:5205:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib conf.c:5728:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2722:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default SDL_OpenAudio (1 channels, 44100 Hz): ALSA: Couldn't open audio device: No such file or directory No more combinations to try, audio open failed Failed to open file '/home/notfall/beep.wav' or configure filtergraph nan : 0.000 fd= 0 aq= 0KB vq= 0KB sq= 0B The message aplay: device_list:279: no soundcards found... indicates that no audio cards were found. **This is the issue that I don't understand, since the script is executed by the same user.** Even more interestingly, the script works when being executed in a cronjob. The user is always logged in graphically. **Do you folks have any idea why the script can't find the audio card?** Thank you!

I learned that by adding ",a" to the file name in a maildir, the Evolution software considers the mail as an important message. So I would like to tag some messages using Procmail but whatever I do, I go around in circles, because I do not know the file name before it is delivered by Procmail, and when it is already delivered, it is immediately renamed by various external mechanisms by moving it from new to cur. Is there a solution only with Procmail? I know other solutions, but they do not interest me here.

I know just enough about regexp to make my brain hurt and I was hoping for some assistance. I need a recipe to take any mail that doesn't have the string "ZYX" in the TO: line and dump it into "0.waste". Would someone be willing to lend a hand?

How can I debug ~/.forward file or see errors logged by mail agent on it **without root privileges**? I'm trying to process my mail with procmail. When I invoke procmail manually with procmail < testMailFile it works as expected (my procmail rule logs input to a file). When no ~/.forward file is present all mail goes to my default mailbox /var/mail/$USER and ~/.procmailrc **is not processed**. When I create ~/.forward with: "|exec /usr/bin/procmail || exit 75" mail stops coming but .procmailrc **is still not processed**. $ lsb_release -a|grep Desc Description: CentOS release 5.10 (Final) $ rpm -q exim exim-4.63-10.el5

I am succeeding rewriting my subject line to have a [LIST] prepended to it: :0fhw * ^TO_[^@ ]+@example\.com\> * ^Subject:\/.+ | /usr/local/bin/formail -I"Subject: [LIST]$MATCH" This succeeds and turns:

Subject: here is the subject line

into

Subject: [LIST] here is the subject line

ButeI also want to insert the user portion of user@example.com into the subject line, like this:

Subject: [LIST] user@example.com here is the subject line

... and I don't understand how to do this when I only get one $MATCH variable! How can I insert two different variables into the single formail line that rewrites the subject line?

is there a way via Postfix and or procmail for example or another software to forward e-mails from one inbox to another 2 inboxes where each message goes either to one inbox or the other based on content. Sometimes the message is multipart and the keyword is within the first part.

I'd like to do so that only certain From: addresses can send to an email address (mailing list) on an Ubuntu system running Postfix. Understanding the Postfix the manuals are requires a lot of knowledge, so I'm hoping to get a complete recipe I can use. Currently this is what I have: /etc/postfix/main.cf: smtpd_recipient_restrictions = check_recipient_access hash:/etc/postfix/protected_destinations smtpd_restriction_classes = insiders_only insiders_only = check_sender_access hash:/etc/postfix/insiders, reject /etc/postfix/protected_destinations: protected.list@example.com insiders_only /etc/postfix/insiders: allowed.user@example.com OK another.allowed.user@example.com OK This gives: fatal: parameter "smtpd_recipient_restrictions": specify at least one working instance of: check_relay_domains, reject_unauth_destination, reject, defer or defer_if_permit I am open to any suggestions. It doesn't have to be Postfix. It can be procmail or any other standard solution. Note: the recipient is a mailing list, and thus does not have a user account on the system account. So any solution must work without an account. ### Current mailing list implementation /etc/postfix/virtual: protected.list@example.com user1@example.com, user2.example.com, ...

I have *Amazon Linux* instances in *AWS EC2*. They run sendmail to communicate with each other, and send outgoing mail through a SMARTHOST that is a commercial email provider. No MX records are pointing to my EC2 instances' public IP addresses, and no incoming mail ports are open. What I really want is to have a commercial website (goformz.com) send a POST request with a PDF form to my website hosted on these instances whenever a user submits a form. But until they figure out how to do that, I could work with their current behavior of having them email a PDF attachment to an address on the commercial email server. After some head-scratching, it looks like I could probably get what I need by installing fetchmail and either procmail or maildrop, no need to touch my sendmail configuration. And that it "ought" to be very simple. I am familiar with **using** procmail in a ~/.forward file as a **user**, but installing and configuring it on my EC2 servers is baffling to me after reading the documentation. It looks like both fetchmail and procmail want to run as daemons, and hand off messages to other servers. I expected that fetchmail would run as a daemon, fetching messages from the commercial email account over IMAP at some frequency, and then **synchronously** invoke procmail on each message, with a rule that was simply to pipe the message to a PHP script that would extract the attachment and process the form fields in it. It would be okay if the script invocation had to be in a ~/.forward file, I would hard-wire the user directory, but I don't see how to set that up. Can anyone set me straight on this, perhaps with just a pointer to documentation that would address this scenario? I have found other answered questions that look similar, but none that have enlightened me. What I've found seems to assume that the server would be running postfix as the MTA.

I am getting a lot of spam messages from a certain country. They all have the same pattern in the source. I want to write a procmail rule to automatically move all those emails to my Spam folder. The source of a spam email might look like this ("[REDACTED]" added by me to protect my privacy):

Return-Path: 
X-Original-To: [REDACTED]
Delivered-To: [REDACTED]
Received: from [REDACTED] ([REDACTED] [REDACTED])
	by [REDACTED] (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 2AC8E731E799DC
	for ; Sat,  9 Jul 2022 20:16:41 +0000 (UTC)
Received: from [REDACTED].org ([REDACTED].ru [REDACTED])
	by [REDACTED] (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6F1865ECD8
	for ; Sat,  9 Jul 2022 20:16:40 +0000 (UTC)
[...]

What I want to do is look at the "Received" headers and throw everything that comes from .ru TLD into Spam. My attempt is this:

:0 H
* ^Received:*\.ru
.Spam/

However, I'm new to writing procmail rules. How can I go about testing my new rule so I know it's correct?

I have an email address (a mailing list actually) with a basic procmail setup enabled. Right now, the procmail just dumps incoming emails to fs. I have a use-case where I want to add a custom string to be prepended to each email's body which is received this ML. I've been reading up on procmail for the past few days and all the answers/examples I see related to modifying email subjects/bodies either explicitly use sendmail to "forward" the modified email or dump the modified email it to a custom mailbox. What I want is to intercept the message before it is delivered to the ML, prepend some custom text to its body and then let it be delivered to the originally intended ML (i.e. mailboxes of the members of the ML). Is there a way to achieve this?

I am dealing with procmail the first time, so I apologize if the following question is stupid. Before I put procmail in production, I am doing a few basic tests. One of them yielded a totally unexpected result which makes it nearly worthless in my scenario: When procmail cannot read its configuration file, it nevertheless sets its exit code to 0 (true) when it finishes. This is catastrophic, because in my scenario, I am using procmail as an MDA which is executed from within fetchmail. If procmail can't read its configuration file, it can't process (deliver) messages as needed, but sets exit code 0 when it finishes; fetchmail interprets this as successful delivery and deletes the respective messages upstream. In summary, this leads to those messages being lost. The permissions in this scenario are quite complex (fetchmail + procmail + cyrdeliver over lmtp, fetchmail running under its own user account, procmail being suid and setgid, and so on), so it could very well happen that somebody makes a mistake with the permissions when something needs to be changed. Due to the problem described above, such mistakes likely lead to loss of messages. Therefore, I'd like to know how to make procmail to exit with failure (exit code other than 0) if it can't read its configuration file. To give an idea what this is about, please consider the following terminal session (irrelevant lines removed). Please note that the ownership / permissions in the config directory are wrong by intention, because this is my test case. root@morn /etc/fetchmail # whoami root root@morn /etc/fetchmail # dir total 52K drwx------ 2 fetchmail root 4.0K 2022-01-23 10:09 . drwxr-xr-x 123 root root 12K 2022-01-22 17:17 .. -rw------- 1 fetchmail root 2.4K 2022-01-23 10:09 fetchmailrc -rw------- 1 root mail 282 2022-01-23 02:49 procmailrc -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 110 2022-01-23 00:36 testmessage root@morn /etc/fetchmail # dir which procmail -rwsr-sr-x 1 root mail 92K 2017-11-16 23:42 /usr/bin/procmail root@morn /etc/fetchmail # cat /etc/systemd/system/pp-fetchmail.service User=fetchmail Group=mail ExecStart=/usr/bin/fetchmail -f /etc/fetchmail/fetchmailrc --pidfile /run/fetchmail/fetchmail.pid --syslog root@morn /etc/fetchmail # cat fetchmailrc poll pop3.example.com proto pop3 bad-header accept user "user1@example.com" ssl pass "supersecret" is "user1" here no rewrite mda "/usr/bin/procmail TARGET=user1 /etc/fetchmail/procmailrc" root@morn /etc/fetchmail # cat testmessage From: nobody@nowhere.com To: somebody@somewhere.com Subject: Test message This is a test message. root@morn /etc/fetchmail # sudo -u fetchmail -g mail /usr/bin/procmail /etc/fetchmail/procmailrc < testmessage && echo "procmail exited 0" procmail: Couldn't read "/etc/fetchmail/procmailrc" procmail exited 0 Of course, the last two lines are the problem. Does anybody know how to circumvent it? Of course, fixing the permissions would make it work correctly, but that is what I'm explicitly not asking for. I'd like to have a solution which is more robust in case of mistakes (mine or others').

I configured Munpack on my Debian/Linux to extract attachments from incoming emails. (For additional context, Getmail fetches the emails and pipes it to Procmail. A Procmail recipe then pipes it to Munpack.) | munpack -q -C directory/ For some reason, when I get emails with (a) inline attachments (usually images) AND (b) document attachments (usually .csv), the .csv files are completely ruined. _(Note that this issue doesn't arise when there is only one attachment, which typically is a .xls file._ Is there a way to configure Munpack to: 1. Save **ONLY** attachments with the .csv extension in the email. 2. Make sure that the **.csv** files are saved as is.

Using Procmail, I would like to add a rule that dictates: If any email comes from this specific email address, *in addition to delivering it locally*, also forward it to this other email address. My attempt at this rule is as follows:

:0 c:
* ^From:.sender@example.com
! recipient@horses.example

... but this does not appear to work. In fact, it appears to not do anything.

I am looking to do the following: 1. User sends an email to 1234@domain 2. **Procmail recognizes 1234@domain as an email sent to ticket+1234@domain** 3. Procmail recipe handles ticket number and forwards email to the bug tracker Where **bold** is my current obstacle. Here is a proof of concept. At this point, the user still has to send the ticket to ticket+1234@domain for the email to forward correctly:

=/bin/bash
SUBJECT=/usr/bin/formail -zx "Subject:"
:0fhw
* To.*\/([0-9]+)@domain
* MATCH ?? ^\/[0-9]+
|/usr/bin/formail -I "Subject: $SUBJECT (Case $MATCH)"

:0
!tickets@bugtracker

**Some context:** There is one address created, ticket@domain, for ticket handling. Currently, a user sends to ticket+####@domain, and the Procmail recipe uses $MATCH to grab the ticket number that correlates to the bug tracker entry and forwards accordingly. This works. **What I want to do**: Prevent auto-completion errors (a user will enter ticket+ in the recipient field, and the wrong ticket # is auto-completed). To prevent these mistakes, a user needs to send an email to ####@domain _instead_ of ticket+####@domain. **The Big Question:** Can I use Procmail to filter emails from ####@domain to be treated as emails from ticket+####@domain?..

Browsing through web pages around the World Wide Web, I often come across ~/.fetchmailrc examples such as:

poll mail.example.com
    port 993
    proto imap
    user "max123" password "123456"
    mda "/usr/bin/procmail -f %F -d %T"

What do the %F and %T mean? Sometimes, I also see %s. Where can I find the documentation of all the available % options? I have looked at the [fetchmail manual](https://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-man.html) , but it doesn't document this.

Procmail failed while running my external python script on received email. After that I tried run that script manually and provide the same arguments as procmail - it passed without any problems, so I'm trying to figure out why procmail had problems with that script. Is is possible to run procmail from cmdline and provide path to saved .eml file with email's raw data? Shall I configure something else, maybe permissions are wrong - but I guess procmail is executed by the same user as I did a manual check on python script.

I'm trying to execute script when email arrives my server and pass its filename to that script. First part is done, procmail executes script each time an email arrives. Before executing script it copies email to the specific directory. :0c procmail-dir/ :0 fw | /usr/bin/python3 /home/user/script.py How can I get a filename/path to just saved email in procmail-dir and pass it to a script.py?

In my ~/.procmailrc I have the following lines: :0 \* ^Subject:.*(O|o)pen( \|)(S|s)(onic|urge) $MAILDIR/OpenSurge/ As you see, I would like to put any mail containing “Open Surge” (or any variant with space or capital letters) in the folder OpenSurge. But the messages containing this words only went to the default folder. Notice that I have a lot of others recipes with ^From:foo and when I try ^Subject:.*OpenSurge my recipe work with “OpenSurge” but I doesn’t work with the regexp ^Subject:.*(O|o)pen( \|)(S|s)(onic|urge). So, how can I match please with a regexp all possibilities of writing “Open Surge”?

I've recently configured new .procmailrc and .forward files to work with our Postfix mail server. I've tested it with new Emails, and the new .procmailrc is properly filtering and forwarding as desired. Now I would like to somehow re-process the entire contents of my /var/spool/mail/***username*** file using the new .procmailrc so that all 2000+ messages will be properly sorted into my new ~/mail/Likely-Spam, ~/mail/Almost-Certainly-Spam, ~/mail/Cron-Jobs, ~/mail/Email-Backup, etc..., and forward all non-filtered messages to my company outlook account... for posterity. Is there a straightforward command to accomplish this? My mail server is running RHEL 7 with postfix.

I am on a mac using terminal. I am trying to redirect email from a work email to gmail (the work email only allows IMAP and gmail can only fetch from POP - hence the workaround). I have successfully configured fetchmail to fetch the mail from the work email. I would now like to REDIRECT it to gmail, such that when it arrives it appears to arrive from (and I can reply to) the *original* sender. I have tried both procmail and ssmtp with following configurations. For BOTH, the email does arrive in my gmail inbox however it appears to come from ME myusername@gmail.com rather than the original sender. Any suggestions? I am *very* new at this. Welcome suggestions using procmail or ssmtp (or if it will work anything else!) **procmail set up** .fetchmailrc file: set no bouncemail poll outlook.office365.com with protocol imap port 993 auth password user user@domain.com password password ssl sslfingerprint "" sslcertpath /Users/myuser/.certs keep no rewrite mda "/usr/local/bin/procmail -f %F -d %T"; .procmailrc file VERBOSE=yes :0 ! myusername@gmail.com (with sendmail configured to send from my gmail, as per my answer here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/369842/using-procmail-to-forward-to-gmail/369854#369854) **ssmtp set up** /opt/local/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf file root=FIXME@gmail.com mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587 rewriteDomain= hostname=localhost UseTLS=Yes UseSTARTTLS=Yes AuthUser=FIXME@gmail.com AuthPass=Hunter2 FromLineOverride=yes (have also tried without root line, and with rewriteDomain=gmail.com) .fetchmailrc file, same as above except mda line is now: mda "/opt/local/sbin/ssmtp FIXME@gmail.com"