[PLUG] When procmail is led astray - resolved

[Michael Rasmussen]

Charlie Schluting wrote:
> > So what would/did procmail do with mail when the .procmailrc was unreadable?  Bit
> > bucket or some default safe place.  (har!)

As it turns out, now more than ever, comments are your friend!
   DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/read   #completely optional
Since the ^M at line end was commented out all of the mail that with foobared
rules ended up in my $MAILDIR/read - I didn't lose a thing.   
I got lucky twice, once with actually defining the default, and then with
having a comment on the same line that filtered the end of line corruption.

If you set up a system for someone who also uses Windows or MAC you might
consider inserting a DEFAULT definition with a comment just in case.


> It may exit with a temp_fail. It may deliver to a strange mailbox (not
> likely). Mail logs should say - and you may want to enable logging in
> your .procmailrc too.

Ah! I did, though it wasn't helpful.

> Just vi the file and delete all the ^M's :)

Well, I needed to figure that out to get your message.

I actually used dos2unix to recover from the mangling editor (have a Sparc on
my desk too) and sent that across.

Further moral:  don't trust wsftppro (pro? HA!) to do the right thing with
"auto" detecting ASCII vs Binary files.


-- 
      Michael Rasmussen, Portland Oregon  
    Be appropriate && Follow your curiosity
          http://www.patch.com/words/ 
  The fortune cookie says:
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
- Voltaire