HI guys,

Just wondering if its possible to put procmail on a smart host.
Basically we have a sendmail relay that gathers all incoming email,
processes it through procmail (saves all good email in backup) then
spits out to our exchange server inside.

When we send email the exchange server uses a smart host (a different
sendmail server) to send all outgoing email. Its this server i want to
know if its possible to put procmail on just to keep a backup of all
outbound email.

I have googled for procmail on a smart host but found nothing, the
only things i found was using procmail to send to a smart host.

Thanks

Dave

Dave wrote:
> Just wondering if its possible to put procmail on a smart host.
> Basically we have a sendmail relay that gathers all incoming email,
> processes it through procmail (saves all good email in backup) then
> spits out to our exchange server inside.

Hum. This seems sub-optimal. (see below)

> When we send email the exchange server uses a smart host (a different
> sendmail server) to send all outgoing email. Its this server i want to
> know if its possible to put procmail on just to keep a backup of all
> outbound email.
>
> I have googled for procmail on a smart host but found nothing, the
> only things i found was using procmail to send to a smart host.

I don't think you will be able to use Procmail to do what you are
wanting to do.

First, Procmail operates on email out side of the SMTP session. It
sounds like you are having your inbound server deliver messages with
Procmail as an LDA, which then in turn sends the messages on to the
internal server. Email coming in to the first Sendmail box and being
delivered to Procmail is one end-to-end delivery. Email leaving the
first Sendmail box to the Exchange server is another (different)
end-to-end delivery. With this in mind, email leaving the Exchange
server to the second Sendmail box and on out to the world is only one
end-to-end delivery, there is no place (that I'm aware of) for Procmail
to hook in to the outbound message delivery.

Now, if you do not use Procmail to make your backup, but something else
that will accomplish the same thing that resides in the end-to-end
delivery, you can use the same technology on the first inbound Sendmail
box as you could on the second outbound Sendmail box. Milter-BCC is one
such way to add an additional recipient to a message as it passes
through Sendmail during the end-to-end delivery.

So, you could use Milter-BCC to add a recipient to each and every
outbound message such that it would be sent to a special mail box for
archival / backup reasons.

I would also be very tempted to try to use the same thing for inbound
archiving / backup too. I personally like the idea that you are
maintaining the end-to-end delivery with out completing delivery and
starting another delivery. You would just need to alter the inbound
Sendmail box to use milter-bcc and configure it that it does not accept
messages (for mail boxes on Exchange) locally but rather relay them in
to the Exchange server. This would allow you to take full advantage of
the message queue and all it's features (retries and the likes).

Just my $.02 worth.



Grant. . . .