procmail is creating Maildir files instead of mbox

[use...@smalltime.com]

Hi all. I've started having trouble with procmail. It has
spontaneously (as far as I can tell), started using a Maildir system
instead of the mbox setup that I am using for one of my users.
Specifically, it has created new/, cur/, and tmp/ directories inside of
/var/spool/mail and put new mail into new/ instead of using
/var/spool/mail/$USER.

This is what I have at the top of /home/$USER/.procmailrc:

SHELL=/bin/sh
MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail
DEFAULT=/var/spool/mail/$USER
DROPPRIVS=yes
VERBOSE=on
LOGFILE=$PMDIR/log

The same thing happened to another user on my machine previously, an
admin account that is only used to get mail sent to root and
postmaster. I ended up trashing that account because I couldn't figure
out how to fix this. Now it has happened to my personal mail account,
which I would rather not trash.

Help please!

Thanks.

[NM Public]

On 14 Jul 2005, use...@smalltime.com wrote:
> Specifically, it has created new/, cur/, and tmp/ directories inside of
> /var/spool/mail and put new mail into new/ instead of using
> /var/spool/mail/$USER.
>
> This is what I have at the top of /home/$USER/.procmailrc:
>
> SHELL=/bin/sh
> MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
> PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail
> DEFAULT=/var/spool/mail/$USER
> DROPPRIVS=yes
> VERBOSE=on
> LOGFILE=$PMDIR/log

First, I suggest that you comment out this line:

# DEFAULT=/var/spool/mail/$USER

It is almost always best to use the *default* DEFAULT and not
explicitly set it.

Next, please post a recipe that delivers to $DEFAULT so we can
see what's going wrong. It should look something like this:

:0:
* condition
$DEFAULT

Hope this helps,
Nancy

--
Nancy McGough ~ <http://www.ii.com> ~ <http://deflexion.com>
IMAP, pine, procmail, data deflexion, infinity, and more
> > > Please keep the discussion in the group < < <

[use...@smalltime.com]

> Next, please post a recipe that delivers to $DEFAULT so we can
> see what's going wrong. It should look something like this:

Nancy, I don't have any recipes that deliver to $DEFAULT. I thought
that DEFAULT was just that, where the unmatched emails end up by
default. My recipes look like this:

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Flag: YES
caughtspam

:0:
* ^From:.*j...@example.com
joe

[etc.]

Still, I don't see how any of that is the issue because none of that
has changed from when things were working.

[use...@smalltime.com]

The problem was solved on the procmail mailingl ist.
It turns out that $USER is not a supported variable. For whatever
reason, it had worked for years and now stopped working. The supported
variable is $LOGNAME.

[NM Public]

On 14 Jul 2005, use...@smalltime.com wrote:

If you do not explicitly set the DEFAULT variable, as I
suggested, things should work correctly. I still recommend not
explicitly setting DEFAULT. This will avoid other potential
problems.