Equivalent of postfix+procmail for windows
linux_user
In the early days of school, it would be on systems running (IBM )CMS, VMS,
and a variety of Unix. In the early days of leaving school, I got my email
mostly from work and eventually got a Windows PC ( in those days, many
students just did not have PC's I had an atari, but no ISP ). Then signed
up with an ISP started getting email at home, can't remember my early
clients. Eventually settled on Forte Agent. In other words, while I am
technical in nature, I have never really done more than scrape the surface
of email.
So now my email is getting quite complex, as well as my platform usage.
This makes my email rather disorganized. It occurred to me that I have
a machine ( several in fact ) that is very good at organizing things.
It's called a computer :)
My thought was that I would use postfix+procmail to retrieve email into
a folder on a Windows partition. Then I could use a MUA on whichever
computer I am on.
Should work, except for one problem. The one computer that it would be
best to use to retrieve the email, runs Linux half the time and Windows
the other half. So I would like a software package that runs on Windows,
, does the same thing as postfix+procmail, and uses at leas tone of the
same mailbox formats.
Can anyone make a suggestion?
Frank Slootweg
[...]
> Should work, except for one problem. The one computer that it would be
> best to use to retrieve the email, runs Linux half the time and Windows
> the other half. So I would like a software package that runs on Windows,
> , does the same thing as postfix+procmail, and uses at leas tone of the
> same mailbox formats.
>
> Can anyone make a suggestion?
Cygwin [1]. Cygwin is a Linux-like/compatible environment on
(MS-)Windows. procmail is readily available as a Cygwin package [2].
You can probably build postfix on Cygwin, but exim [3] is probably a
suitable ready-to- use alternative.
[1] <http://cygwin.com>
[2] <http://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-grep.cgi?grep=procmail>
linux_user
>
> Cygwin [1]. Cygwin is a Linux-like/compatible environment on
> (MS-)Windows. procmail is readily available as a Cygwin package [2].
> You can probably build postfix on Cygwin, but exim [3] is probably a
> suitable ready-to- use alternative.
>
I would buy that, but... I look at using procmail on Windows before. This
is in the FAQ
'Q: Is there a Procmail for Windows NT?
A: No, and it's somewhat unlikely that anybody would undertake a port.
Read Bart Schaefer's excellent summary of the problems. Excerpt: "I've
seriously looked at porting it to NT, yes. The problems are pretty
severe." '
I seem to remember the summary saying that procmail under cygwin was
pretty flakey. Can't say for sure since the link is gone.
Anyone know?
David F. Skoll
> Should work, except for one problem. The one computer that it would be
> best to use to retrieve the email, runs Linux half the time and Windows
> the other half. So I would like a software package that runs on Windows,
> , does the same thing as postfix+procmail, and uses at leas tone of the
> same mailbox formats.
> Can anyone make a suggestion?
Why don't you avoid the whole mess and dedicate a Linux computer to
running the MTA and an IMAP server? With IMAP, you can retrieve your
mail from Linux or Windows and have all your mail and folders present.
If your mail volume is low, you can even make a VMWare machine that does
this. You can run the VMWare machine from Linux or Windows, so it doesn't
matter which OS you happen to be booted into.
Regards,
David.
Frank Slootweg
> On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:25:31 +0000, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>
> >
> > Cygwin [1]. Cygwin is a Linux-like/compatible environment on
> > (MS-)Windows. procmail is readily available as a Cygwin package [2].
> > You can probably build postfix on Cygwin, but exim [3] is probably a
> > suitable ready-to- use alternative.
> >
>
> I would buy that, but... I look at using procmail on Windows before. This
> is in the FAQ
>
> 'Q: Is there a Procmail for Windows NT?
>
> A: No, and it's somewhat unlikely that anybody would undertake a port.
> Read Bart Schaefer's excellent summary of the problems. Excerpt: "I've
> seriously looked at porting it to NT, yes. The problems are pretty
> severe." '
I can understand that. *Porting* UNIX stuff to *native* (MS-)Windows
is no simple task, because you basically have to write everything from
scratch.
*Building* a Cygwin package is a *totally* different approach, because
it is *not* a 'port', but a build, which is a much, much simpler
process.
FYI, in the past I have built 'my' newsreader - tin - on Cygwin, a
piece of cake. (Nowadays a mainly use the pre-built packages, because
that's even easier.)
> I seem to remember the summary saying that procmail under cygwin was
> pretty flakey. Can't say for sure since the link is gone.
>
> Anyone know?
I don't see why procmail would be flakey. It's just a user level
command/'filter', nothing spectacular. Remember that the actual code is
just plain (Linux) procmail and that code runs in a Linux-like/
compatible environment. *If* there's anything "flakey" that would either
be procmail itself or Cygwin, both of which are highly unlikely.
If I were you, I would concentrate on Cygwin - either pre-built
packages or own builds - instead of ports to native (MS-)Windows.
FYI, I have professionaly supported, managed and run professional UNIX
(HP-UX) systems for two decades and am quite impressed and satisfied
with Cygwin.
linux_user
> Why don't you avoid the whole mess and dedicate a Linux computer to
> running the MTA and an IMAP server?
At this point I can't dedicate any of my computers to running only Linux.
linux_user
>
> I can understand that. *Porting* UNIX stuff to *native* (MS-)Windows
> is no simple task, because you basically have to write everything from
> scratch.
>
No. Actually for a generic program, 95% of the code doesn't have to be
rewritten. Some more some less depending on how OS intensive the stuff
is. For example, a checksum subroutine such as MD5,CRC or SHA would
probably not need any code rewritten. I know because I've done it.
> *Building* a Cygwin package is a *totally* different approach, because
> it is *not* a 'port', but a build, which is a much, much simpler
> process.
>
That means that building is a simpler process. It does not mean that the
resulting program is any more robust. Fact is that a Unix program ported
to Windows behaves flakey when the developers have trouble emulating some
system call. Take that Unix program and build under Cygwin, at some point
it will make a call to the Cygwin DLL of that same system call, and the
DLL will try to emulate the call. Think the cygwin developers are so much
better that they can emulate a Unix system call any better then the
procmail programmers? Guess what, for windows port that run flakey in
certain places the cygwin ports also run flakey in those places.
In fact a practical example is the debugger for the OCaml programming
language was not ported to Windows because the developer could not figure
a good way to emulate fork() ( every developer knows you don't fork
in Windows--sorry) and some important features relied on fork(). Guess
what? You would see complaints on the OCaml mailing list that the cygwin
version of the debugger would behave flakey in certain features-- those
msot heavily relying on fork().
>> I seem to remember the summary saying that procmail under cygwin was
>> pretty flakey. Can't say for sure since the link is gone.
>>
>> Anyone know?
>
> I don't see why procmail would be flakey. It's just a user level
> command/'filter', nothing spectacular. Remember that the actual code is
> just plain (Linux) procmail and that code runs in a Linux-like/
> compatible environment.
Well there are lots of little things that are slightly different but my
experience the big one is emulating fork in Windows. If procmail is trying
to spawn a lot of processes to concurrently process mail it may be flakey
under cygwin.
OTOH procmail is delivered in a cygwin package now, so the developers may
feel it's stable enough. The question is, has anyone has experience with
it?
Gary R. Schmidt
Cheers,
Gary B-)
--
______________________________________________________________________________
Armful of chairs: Something some people would not know
whether you were up them with or not
- Barry Humphries
Landmark
>At this point I can't dedicate any of my computers to running only Linux.
That's a strange sort of reply in view of the name you've given
yourself, "Linux User". What you are trying to do doesn't require an
especially powerful computer and if you don't have any old dogs lying
around you could probably easily pick one up for not very much money
at all.
Frank Slootweg
> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:35:44 +0000, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>
> >
> > I can understand that. *Porting* UNIX stuff to *native* (MS-)Windows
> > is no simple task, because you basically have to write everything from
> > scratch.
> >
> No. Actually for a generic program, 95% of the code doesn't have to be
> rewritten. Some more some less depending on how OS intensive the stuff
> is. For example, a checksum subroutine such as MD5,CRC or SHA would
> probably not need any code rewritten. I know because I've done it.
I should have said "you basically have to write all supporting code
from scratch". Sorry about that.
> > *Building* a Cygwin package is a *totally* different approach, because
> > it is *not* a 'port', but a build, which is a much, much simpler
> > process.
> >
> That means that building is a simpler process. It does not mean that the
> resulting program is any more robust. Fact is that a Unix program ported
> to Windows behaves flakey when the developers have trouble emulating some
> system call. Take that Unix program and build under Cygwin, at some point
> it will make a call to the Cygwin DLL of that same system call, and the
> DLL will try to emulate the call. Think the cygwin developers are so much
> better that they can emulate a Unix system call any better then the
> procmail programmers?
Yes, the Cygwin developers are so much better, because that's what
*they* *do*. They 'emulate' the Linux syscalls on (MS-)Windows. The
procmail programmers code procmail, a totally different thing. *Perhaps*
the procmail programmers know a bit or two about (MS-)Windows, but
there's is no reason to *assume* such knowledge, let alone that they
have equal or more knowledge than the Cygwin developers.
As to the "behaves flakey" and "have trouble emulating some system
call": They already *have* done all that work a long time ago and
there's nothing "flakey" about it. *If* there was flakeyness in Cygwin,
lots of other code would have problems, not just procmail.
> Guess what, for windows port that run flakey in
> certain places the cygwin ports also run flakey in those places.
No, see above.
> In fact a practical example is the debugger for the OCaml programming
> language was not ported to Windows because the developer could not figure
> a good way to emulate fork() ( every developer knows you don't fork
> in Windows--sorry) and some important features relied on fork(). Guess
> what? You would see complaints on the OCaml mailing list that the cygwin
> version of the debugger would behave flakey in certain features-- those
> msot heavily relying on fork().
You're joking, right? Do you really think one can develop a Linux/UNIX
API environment if one can not properly implement a basic syscall like
fork()? And how do you think that pipelines, scripts, etc. can work if
fork() is "flakey"?
People/companies have been doing this kind of stuff - implementing
UNIX API environments on other OSs/micro-kernels - for decades. Case in
point: My (ex) employer - HP - did this already in the early eighties by
implementing HP-UX on their Sun OS (no, no *that* Sun, which didn't
exist yet) micro-kernel.
So, if the developer (of the debugger for the OCaml programming
language) had problems emulating fork(), then he obviously was not up to
the task, period.
> >> I seem to remember the summary saying that procmail under cygwin was
> >> pretty flakey. Can't say for sure since the link is gone.
> >>
> >> Anyone know?
> >
> > I don't see why procmail would be flakey. It's just a user level
> > command/'filter', nothing spectacular. Remember that the actual code is
> > just plain (Linux) procmail and that code runs in a Linux-like/
> > compatible environment.
>
> Well there are lots of little things that are slightly different but my
> experience the big one is emulating fork in Windows. If procmail is trying
> to spawn a lot of processes to concurrently process mail it may be flakey
> under cygwin.
IMO this is all pure speculation. I.e. emulating fork in Windows is a
non-issue and there's no indication whatsoever that Cygwin has problems
with "a lot of processes". Also a .procmailrc recipe is not really that
different from a shell script, and believe it or not, Cygwin can do
shell scripts just fine.
> OTOH procmail is delivered in a cygwin package now, so the developers may
> feel it's stable enough. The question is, has anyone has experience with
> it?
Why don't you just try it? You don't seem to have an alternative and
besides your urban legend there is no counter indication to try it.
David F. Skoll
>> running the MTA and an IMAP server?
linux_user wrote:
> At this point I can't dedicate any of my computers to running only Linux.
Which is why I suggested VMWare. It's gratis, and I believe the virtual
machine image is the same on Windoze and Linux.
-- David.