Using Filter to Filter Mailing Lists (draft)

[Nancy McGough]

Please send me feedback on this. I plan to make this a regular
posting (unless people don't want me to).

Thanks,
Nancy

USING ELM'S FILTER PROGRAM TO FILTER MAILING LISTS
==================================================

1] Note the full path for filter by typing:

which filter

If your system doesn't have filter ask your sys admin to install it.

2] Create ~/.elm/filter-rules

cd
mkdir .elm
cd .elm
pico filter-rules

3] Enter a modified version of the following in your ~/.elm/filter-rules:

if (to contains "seasigi") then save "~/Folders/INBOX.seasigi"
if (to contains "lynx-dev") then save "~/Folders/INBOX.lynx-dev"
if (to contains "www-talk") then save "~/Folders/INBOX.www-talk"

Replace /Folders with the name of the directory where your mail folders are
stored. The default for Pine and Unix mail is /mail (lower case m) and the
default for Elm is /Mail (upper case M).

Note that ``to contains ___'' means either the To or Cc header contains ___

4] To see what the filter rules will do type the following at your Unix
prompt:

filter -r

5] Create a ~/.forward file by typing:

cd
pico .forward

6] Enter a modified version of the following in your ~/.forward:

"|/usr/local/bin/filter -o ~nancym/.elm/filter-errors"

Note you do want to include the quotes and you want to replace
/usr/local/bin with the correct path for filter (see step 1)
and replace nancym with your login name.

Note that on some systems you will need to make your .forward world
readable and your home directory world searchable in order for the
mail transport agent to "see" it. To do this type:

cd
chmod 644 .forward
chmod +x .

7] Send yourself an email message to make sure that regular messages
get through to your default inbox.

8] Regularly look at ~/.elm/filterlog and filter-errors to make sure things
are working. You can automatically check filter-errors each time you
log in by putting the following in your .login:

tail ~/.elm/filter-errors

Also you probably want to regularly delete filterlog and filter-errors so
they don't fill up your disk space!

FOR MORE INFO SEE:
man filter |less
comp.mail.elm
Elm Filter Guide

I hope this helps. Please send me any suggestions for improving it - updated
versions will be on ftp://ftp.ii.com/pub/ii/Internet/filtering_mail.

-Nancy

--
<A HREF="ftp://ftp.ii.com/pub/ii">Nancy McGough, Infinite Ink</A>

[hills...@gmail.com]