Exim's interfaces to mail ltering

1. Forwarding and ltering in Exim ............................................................................................ 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. Filter operation ........................................................................................................................ Testing a new lter le ........................................................................................................... Installing a lter le ................................................................................................................ Testing an installed lter le .................................................................................................. Details of ltering commands ............................................................................................... 1 1 1 2 3 3

2. Sieve lter les ............................................................................................................................ 4 2.1 Recognition of Sieve lters ................................................................................................... 2.2 Saving to specied folders .................................................................................................... 2.3 Strings containing header names ........................................................................................ 2.4 Exists test with empty list of headers .................................................................................. 2.5 Header test with invalid MIME encoding in header ........................................................... 2.6 Address test for multiple addresses per header ................................................................ 2.7 Semantics of keep .................................................................................................................. 2.8 Semantics of leinto ............................................................................................................... 2.9 Semantics of redirect ............................................................................................................. 2.10 String arguments .................................................................................................................. 2.11 Number units ........................................................................................................................ 2.12 RFC compliance ................................................................................................................... 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

3. Exim lter les ............................................................................................................................. 7 3.1 Format of Exim lter les ....................................................................................................... 7 3.2 Data values in lter commands ............................................................................................ 7 3.3 String expansion ..................................................................................................................... 7 3.4 Some useful general variables ............................................................................................. 8 3.5 Header variables .................................................................................................................... 9 3.6 User variables ....................................................................................................................... 10 3.7 Current directory .................................................................................................................. 10 3.8 Signicant deliveries ............................................................................................................ 10 3.9 Filter commands ................................................................................................................... 10 3.10 The add command ............................................................................................................. 11 3.11 The deliver command ........................................................................................................ 11 3.12 The save command ........................................................................................................... 11 3.13 The pipe command ............................................................................................................ 12 3.14 Mail commands .................................................................................................................. 14 3.15 Logging commands ........................................................................................................... 16 3.16 The nish command .......................................................................................................... 16 3.17 The testprint command ..................................................................................................... 16 3.18 The fail command .............................................................................................................. 16 3.19 The freeze command ........................................................................................................ 16 3.20 The headers command ..................................................................................................... 17 3.21 Obeying commands conditionally ................................................................................... 17 3.22 String testing conditions .................................................................................................... 17 3.23 Numeric testing conditions ............................................................................................... 19 3.24 Testing for signicant deliveries ....................................................................................... 19 3.25 Testing for error messages ............................................................................................... 19 3.26 Testing a list of addresses ................................................................................................ 19 3.27 Testing for personal mail ................................................................................................... 20 3.28 Alias addresses for the personal condition .................................................................... 21 3.29 Details of the personal condition ..................................................................................... 21 i

3.30 3.31 3.32 3.33

Testing delivery status ....................................................................................................... Multiple personal mailboxes ............................................................................................. Ignoring delivery errors ..................................................................................................... Examples of Exim lter commands .................................................................................

21 22 22 22

ii

1. Forwarding and ltering in Exim

This document describes the user interfaces to Exims in-built mail ltering facilities, and is copyright University of Cambridge 2010. It corresponds to Exim version 4.82.

1.1 Introduction
Most Unix mail transfer agents (programs that deliver mail) permit individual users to specify automatic forwarding of their mail, usually by placing a list of forwarding addresses in a le called .forward in their home directories. Exim extends this facility by allowing the forwarding instructions to be a set of rules rather than just a list of addresses, in effect providing .forward with conditions. Operating the set of rules is called ltering, and the le that contains them is called a lter le. Exim supports two different kinds of lter le. An Exim lter contains instructions in a format that is unique to Exim. A Sieve lter contains instructions in the Sieve format that is dened by RFC 3028. As this is a standard format, Sieve lter les may already be familiar to some users. Sieve les should also be portable between different environments. However, the Exim ltering facility contains more features (such as variable expansion), and better integration with the host environment (such as the use of external processes and pipes). The choice of which kind of lter to use can be left to the end-user, provided that the system administrator has congured Exim appropriately for both kinds of lter. However, if interoperability is important, Sieve is the only choice. The ability to use ltering or traditional forwarding has to be enabled by the system administrator, and some of the individual facilities can be separately enabled or disabled. A local document should be provided to describe exactly what has been enabled. In the absence of this, consult your system administrator. This document describes how to use a lter le and the format of its contents. It is intended for use by end-users. Both Sieve lters and Exim lters are covered. However, for Sieve lters, only issues that relate to the Exim implementation are discussed, since Sieve itself is described elsewhere. The contents of traditional .forward les are not described here. They normally contain just a list of addresses, le names, or pipe commands, separated by commas or newlines, but other types of item are also available. The full details can be found in the chapter on the redirect router in the Exim specication, which also describes how the system administrator can set up and control the use of ltering.

1.2 Filter operation

It is important to realize that, in Exim, no deliveries are actually made while a lter or traditional .forward le is being processed. Running a lter or processing a traditional .forward le sets up future delivery operations, but does not carry them out. The result of lter or .forward le processing is a list of destinations to which a message should be delivered. The deliveries themselves take place later, along with all other deliveries for the message. This means that it is not possible to test for successful deliveries while ltering. It also means that any duplicate addresses that are generated are dropped, because Exim never delivers the same message to the same address more than once.

1.3 Testing a new lter le

Filter les, especially the more complicated ones, should always be tested, as it is easy to make mistakes. Exim provides a facility for preliminary testing of a lter le before installing it. This tests the syntax of the le and its basic operation, and can also be used with traditional .forward les. Because a lter can do tests on the content of messages, a test message is required. Suppose you have a new lter le called mylter and a test message in a le called test-message. Assuming that Exim is installed with the conventional path name /usr/sbin/sendmail (some operating systems use /usr/lib/sendmail), the following command can be used: 1 Forwarding and ltering in Exim

/usr/sbin/sendmail -bf myfilter <test-message The -bf option tells Exim that the following item on the command line is the name of a lter le that is to be tested. There is also a -bF option, which is similar, but which is used for testing system lter les, as opposed to user lter les, and which is therefore of use only to the system administrator. The test message is supplied on the standard input. If there are no message-dependent tests in the lter, an empty le (/dev/null) can be used. A supplied message must start with header lines or the From message separator line that is found in many multi-message folder les. Note that blank lines at the start terminate the header lines. A warning is given if no header lines are read. The result of running this command, provided no errors are detected in the lter le, is a list of the actions that Exim would try to take if presented with the message for real. For example, for an Exim lter, the output Deliver message to: [email protected] Save message to: /home/lemuel/mail/archive means that one copy of the message would be sent to [email protected], and another would be added to the le /home/lemuel/mail/archive, if all went well. The actions themselves are not attempted while testing a lter le in this way; there is no check, for example, that any forwarding addresses are valid. For an Exim lter, if you want to know why a particular action is being taken, add the -v option to the command. This causes Exim to output the results of any conditional tests and to indent its output according to the depth of nesting of if commands. Further additional output from a lter test can be generated by the testprint command, which is described below. When Exim is outputting a list of the actions it would take, if any text strings are included in the output, non-printing characters therein are converted to escape sequences. In particular, if any text string contains a newline character, this is shown as \n in the testing output. When testing a lter in this way, Exim makes up an envelope for the message. The recipient is by default the user running the command, and so is the sender, but the command can be run with the -f option to supply a different sender. For example, /usr/sbin/sendmail -bf myfilter \ -f [email protected] <test-message Alternatively, if the -f option is not used, but the rst line of the supplied message is a From separator from a message folder le (not the same thing as a From: header line), the sender is taken from there. If -f is present, the contents of any From line are ignored. The return path is the same as the envelope sender, unless the message contains a Return-path: header, in which case it is taken from there. You need not worry about any of this unless you want to test out features of a lter le that rely on the sender address or the return path. It is possible to change the envelope recipient by specifying further options. The -bfd option changes the domain of the recipient address, while the -bfl option changes the local part, that is, the part before the @ sign. An adviser could make use of these to test someone elses lter le. The -bfp and -bfs options specify the prex or sufx for the local part. These are relevant only when support for multiple personal mailboxes is implemented; see the description in section 3.31 below.

1.4 Installing a lter le

A lter le is normally installed under the name .forward in your home directory it is distinguished from a conventional .forward le by its rst line (described below). However, the le name is congurable, and some system administrators may choose to use some different name or location for lter les. 2 Forwarding and ltering in Exim

1.5 Testing an installed lter le

Testing a lter le before installation cannot nd every potential problem; for example, it does not actually run commands to which messages are piped. Some live tests should therefore also be done once a lter is installed. If at all possible, test your lter le by sending messages from some other account. If you send a message to yourself from the ltered account, and delivery fails, the error message will be sent back to the same account, which may cause another delivery failure. It wont cause an innite sequence of such messages, because delivery failure messages do not themselves generate further messages. However, it does mean that the failure wont be returned to you, and also that the postmaster will have to investigate the stuck message. If you have to test an Exim lter from the same account, a sensible precaution is to include the line if error_message then finish endif as the rst lter command, at least while testing. This causes ltering to be abandoned for a delivery failure message, and since no destinations are generated, the message goes on to be delivered to the original address. Unless there is a good reason for not doing so, it is recommended that the above test be left in all Exim lter les. (This does not apply to Sieve les.)

1.6 Details of ltering commands

The ltering commands for Sieve and Exim lters are completely different in syntax and semantics. The Sieve mechanism is dened in RFC 3028; in the next chapter we describe how it is integrated into Exim. The subsequent chapter covers Exim ltering commands in detail.

Forwarding and ltering in Exim

2. Sieve lter les

The code for Sieve ltering in Exim was contributed by Michael Haardt, and most of the content of this chapter is taken from the notes he provided. Since Sieve is an extensible language, it is important to understand Sieve in this context as the specic implementation of Sieve for Exim. This chapter does not contain a description of Sieve, since that can be found in RFC 3028, which should be read in conjunction with these notes. The Exim Sieve implementation offers the core as dened by RFC 3028, comparison tests, the subaddress parameter, the copy, envelope, leinto, notify, and vacation extensions, but not the reject extension. Exim does not support message delivery notications (MDNs), so adding it just to the Sieve lter (as required for reject) makes little sense. In order for Sieve to work properly in Exim, the system administrator needs to make some adjustments to the Exim conguration. These are described in the chapter on the redirect router in the full Exim specication.

2.1 Recognition of Sieve lters

A lter le is interpreted as a Sieve lter if its rst line is # Sieve filter This is what distinguishes it from a conventional .forward le or an Exim lter le.

2.2 Saving to specied folders

If the system administrator has set things up as suggested in the Exim specication, and you use keep or leinto to save a mail into a folder, absolute les are stored where specied, relative les are stored relative to $home, and inbox goes to the standard mailbox location.

2.3 Strings containing header names

RFC 3028 does not specify what happens if a string denoting a header eld does not contain a valid header name, for example, it contains a colon. This implementation generates an error instead of ignoring the header eld in order to ease script debugging, which ts in with the common picture of Sieve.

2.4 Exists test with empty list of headers

The exists test succeeds only if all the specied headers exist. RFC 3028 does not explicitly specify what happens on an empty list of headers. This implementation evaluates that condition as true, interpreting the RFC in a strict sense.

2.5 Header test with invalid MIME encoding in header

Some MUAs process invalid base64 encoded data, generating junk. Others ignore junk after seeing an equal sign in base64 encoded data. RFC 2047 does not specify how to react in this case, other than stating that a client must not forbid to process a message for that reason. RFC 2045 species that invalid data should be ignored (apparently looking at end of line characters). It also species that invalid data may lead to rejecting messages containing them (and there it appears to talk about true encoding violations), which is a clear contradiction to ignoring them. RFC 3028 does not specify how to process incorrect MIME words. This implementation treats them literally, as it does if the word is correct but its character set cannot be converted to UTF-8.

Sieve lter les

2.6 Address test for multiple addresses per header

A header may contain multiple addresses. RFC 3028 does not explicitly specify how to deal with them, but since the address test checks if anything matches anything else, matching one address sufces to satisfy the condition. That makes it impossible to test if a header contains a certain set of addresses and no more, but it is more logical than letting the test fail if the header contains an additional address besides the one the test checks for.

2.7 Semantics of keep

The keep command is equivalent to fileinto "inbox"; It saves the message and resets the implicit keep flag. It does not set the implicit keep flag; there is no command to set it once it has been reset.

2.8 Semantics of leinto

RFC 3028 does not specify whether leinto should try to create a mail folder if it does not exist. This implementation allows the sysadmin to congure that aspect using the appendle transport options create_directory, create_le, and le_must_exist. See the appendle transport in the Exim specication for details.

2.9 Semantics of redirect

Sieve scripts are supposed to be interoperable between servers, so this implementation does not allow mail to be redirected to unqualied addresses, because the domain would depend on the system being used. On systems with virtual mail domains, the default domain is probably not what the user expects it to be.

2.10 String arguments

There has been confusion if the string arguments to require are to be matched case-sensitively or not. This implementation matches them with the match type :is (default, see section 2.7.1 of the RFC) and the comparator i;ascii-casemap (default, see section 2.7.3 of the RFC). The RFC denes the command defaults clearly, so any different implementations violate RFC 3028. The same is valid for comparator names, also specied as strings.

2.11 Number units

There is a mistake in RFC 3028: the sufx G denotes gibi-, not tebibyte. The mistake is obvious, because RFC 3028 species G to denote 2^30 (which is gibi, not tebi), and that is what this implementation uses as the scaling factor for the sufx G.

2.12 RFC compliance

Exim requires the rst line of a Sieve lter to be # Sieve filter Of course the RFC does not specify that line. Do not expect examples to work without adding it, though. RFC 3028 requires the use of CRLF to terminate a line. The rationale was that CRLF is universally used in network protocols to mark the end of the line. This implementation does not embed Sieve in a network protocol, but uses Sieve scripts as part of the Exim MTA. Since all parts of Exim use LF as the newline character, this implementation does, too, by default, though the system administrator may choose (at Exim compile time) to use CRLF instead. 5 Sieve lter les

Exim violates RFC 2822, section 3.6.8, by accepting 8-bit header names, so this implementation repeats this violation to stay consistent with Exim. This is in preparation for UTF-8 data. Sieve scripts cannot contain NUL characters in strings, but mail headers could contain MIME encoded NUL characters, which could never be matched by Sieve scripts using exact comparisons. For that reason, this implementation extends the Sieve quoted string syntax with \0 to describe a NUL character, violating \0 being the same as 0 in RFC 3028. Even without using \0, the following tests are all true in this implementation. Implementations that use C-style strings will only evaluate the rst test as true. Subject: =?iso-8859-1?q?abc=00def header :contains "Subject" ["abc"] header :contains "Subject" ["def"] header :matches "Subject" ["abc?def"] Note that by considering Sieve to be an MUA, RFC 2047 can be interpreted in a way that NUL characters truncating strings is allowed for Sieve implementations, although not recommended. It is further allowed to use encoded NUL characters in headers, but thats not recommended either. The above example shows why. RFC 3028 states that if an implementation fails to convert a character set to UTF-8, two strings cannot be equal if one contains octets greater than 127. Assuming that all unknown character sets are one-byte character sets with the lower 128 octets being US-ASCII is not sound, so this implementation violates RFC 3028 and treats such MIME words literally. That way at least something could be matched. The folder specied by leinto must not contain the character sequence .. to avoid security problems. RFC 3028 does not specify the syntax of folders apart from keep being equivalent to fileinto "INBOX"; This implementation uses inbox instead. Sieve script errors currently cause messages to be silently led into inbox. RFC 3028 requires that the user is notied of that condition. This may be implemented in the future by adding a header line to mails that are led into inbox due to an error in the lter.

Sieve lter les

3. Exim lter les

This chapter contains a full description of the contents of Exim lter les.

3.1 Format of Exim lter les

Apart from leading white space, the rst text in an Exim lter le must be # Exim filter This is what distinguishes it from a conventional .forward le or a Sieve lter le. If the le does not have this initial line (or the equivalent for a Sieve lter), it is treated as a conventional .forward le, both when delivering mail and when using the -bf testing mechanism. The white space in the line is optional, and any capitalization may be used. Further text on the same line is treated as a comment. For example, you could have # Exim filter <<== do not edit or remove this line! The remainder of the le is a sequence of ltering commands, which consist of keywords and data values. For example, in the command deliver [email protected] the keyword is deliver and the data value is [email protected]. White space or line breaks separate the components of a command, except in the case of conditions for the if command, where round brackets (parentheses) also act as separators. Complete commands are separated from each other by white space or line breaks; there are no special terminators. Thus, several commands may appear on one line, or one command may be spread over a number of lines. If the character # follows a separator anywhere in a command, everything from # up to the next newline is ignored. This provides a way of including comments in a lter le.

3.2 Data values in lter commands

There are two ways in which a data value can be input: If the text contains no white space, it can be typed verbatim. However, if it is part of a condition, it must also be free of round brackets (parentheses), as these are used for grouping in conditions. Otherwise, text must be enclosed in double quotation marks. In this case, the character \ (backslash) is treated as an escape character within the string, causing the following character or characters to be treated specially: \n is replaced by a newline \r is replaced by a carriage return \t is replaced by a tab Backslash followed by up to three octal digits is replaced by the character specied by those digits, and \x followed by up to two hexadecimal digits is treated similarly. Backslash followed by any other character is replaced by the second character, so that in particular, \" becomes " and \\ becomes \. A data item enclosed in double quotes can be continued onto the next line by ending the rst line with a backslash. Any leading white space at the start of the continuation line is ignored. In addition to the escape character processing that occurs when strings are enclosed in quotes, most data values are also subject to string expansion (as described in the next section), in which case the characters $ and \ are also signicant. This means that if a single backslash is actually required in such a string, and the string is also quoted, \\\\ has to be entered. The maximum permitted length of a data string, before expansion, is 1024 characters.

3.3 String expansion

Most data values are expanded before use. Expansion consists of replacing substrings beginning with $ with other text. The full expansion facilities available in Exim are extensive. If you want to know 7 Exim lter les

everything that Exim can do with strings, you should consult the chapter on string expansion in the Exim documentation. In lter les, by far the most common use of string expansion is the substitution of the contents of a variable. For example, the substring $reply_address is replaced by the address to which replies to the message should be sent. If such a variable name is followed by a letter or digit or underscore, it must be enclosed in curly brackets (braces), for example, ${reply_address} If a $ character is actually required in an expanded string, it must be escaped with a backslash, and because backslash is also an escape character in quoted input strings, it must be doubled in that case. The following two examples illustrate two different ways of testing for a $ character in a message: if $message_body contains \$ then ... if $message_body contains "\\$" then ... You can prevent part of a string from being expanded by enclosing it between two occurrences of \N. For example, if $message_body contains \N$$$$\N then ... tests for a run of four dollar characters.

3.4 Some useful general variables

A complete list of the available variables is given in the Exim documentation. This shortened list contains the ones that are most likely to be useful in personal lter les: $body_linecount: The number of lines in the body of the message. $body_zerocount: The number of binary zero characters in the body of the message. $home: In conventional congurations, this variable normally contains the users home directory. The system administrator can, however, change this. $local_part: The part of the email address that precedes the @ sign normally the users login name. If support for multiple personal mailboxes is enabled (see section 3.31 below) and a prex or sufx for the local part was recognized, it is removed from the string in this variable. $local_part_prex: If support for multiple personal mailboxes is enabled (see section 3.31 below), and a local part prex was recognized, this variable contains the prex. Otherwise it contains an empty string. $local_part_sufx: If support for multiple personal mailboxes is enabled (see section 3.31 below), and a local part sufx was recognized, this variable contains the sufx. Otherwise it contains an empty string. $message_body: The initial portion of the body of the message. By default, up to 500 characters are read into this variable, but the system administrator can congure this to some other value. Newlines in the body are converted into single spaces. $message_body_end: The nal portion of the body of the message, formatted and limited in the same way as $message_body. $message_body_size: The size of the body of the message, in bytes. $message_exim_id: The messages local identication string, which is unique for each message handled by a single host. $message_headers: The header lines of the message, concatenated into a single string, with newline characters between them. $message_size: The size of the entire message, in bytes. 8 Exim lter les

$original_local_part: When an address that arrived with the message is being processed, this contains the same value as the variable $local_part. However, if an address generated by an alias, forward, or lter le is being processed, this variable contains the local part of the original address. $reply_address: The contents of the Reply-to: header, if the message has one; otherwise the contents of the From: header. It is the address to which normal replies to the message should be sent. $return_path: The return path that is, the sender eld that will be transmitted as part of the messages envelope if the message is sent to another host. This is the address to which delivery errors are sent. In many cases, this variable has the same value as $sender_address, but if, for example, an incoming message to a mailing list has been expanded, $return_path may have been changed to contain the address of the list maintainer. $sender_address: The sender address that was received in the envelope of the message. This is not necessarily the same as the contents of the From: or Sender: header lines. For delivery error messages (bounce messages) there is no sender address, and this variable is empty. $tod_full: A full version of the time and date, for example: Wed, 18 Oct 1995 09:51:40 +0100. The timezone is always given as a numerical offset from GMT. $tod_log: The time and date in the format used for writing Exims log les, without the timezone, for example: 1995-10-12 15:32:29. $tod_zone: The local timezone offset, for example: +0100.

3.5 Header variables

There is a special set of expansion variables containing the header lines of the message being processed. These variables have names beginning with $header_ followed by the name of the header line, terminated by a colon. For example, $header_from: $header_subject: The whole item, including the terminating colon, is replaced by the contents of the message header line. If there is more than one header line with the same name, their contents are concatenated. For header lines whose data consists of a list of addresses (for example, From: and To:), a comma and newline is inserted between each set of data. For all other header lines, just a newline is used. Leading and trailing white space is removed from header line data, and if there are any MIME words that are encoded as dened by RFC 2047 (because they contain non-ASCII characters), they are decoded and translated, if possible, to a local character set. Translation is attempted only on operating systems that have the iconv() function. This makes the header line look the same as it would when displayed by an MUA. The default character set is ISO-8859-1, but this can be changed by means of the headers command (see below). If you want to see the actual characters that make up a header line, you can specify $rheader_ instead of $header_. This inserts the raw header line, unmodied. There is also an intermediate form, requested by $bheader_, which removes leading and trailing space and decodes MIME words, but does not do any character translation. If an attempt to decode what looks supercially like a MIME word fails, the raw string is returned. If decoding produces a binary zero character, it is replaced by a question mark. The capitalization of the name following $header_ is not signicant. Because any printing character except colon may appear in the name of a messages header (this is a requirement of RFC 2822, the document that describes the format of a mail message) curly brackets must not be used in this case, as they will be taken as part of the header name. Two shortcuts are allowed in naming header variables: The initiating $header_, $rheader_, or $bheader_ can be abbreviated to $h_, $rh_, or $bh_, respectively. The terminating colon can be omitted if the next character is white space. The white space character is retained in the expanded string. However, this is not recommended, because it makes it easy to forget the colon when it really is needed. 9 Exim lter les

If the message does not contain a header of the given name, an empty string is substituted. Thus it is important to spell the names of headers correctly. Do not use $header_Reply_to when you really mean $header_Reply-to.

3.6 User variables

There are ten user variables with names $n0 $n9 that can be incremented by the add command (see section 3.10). These can be used for scoring messages in various ways. If Exim is congured to run a system lter on every message, the values left in these variables are copied into the variables $sn0 $sn9 at the end of the system lter, thus making them available to users lter les. How these values are used is entirely up to the individual installation.

3.7 Current directory

The contents of your lter le should not make any assumptions about the current directory. It is best to use absolute paths for le names; you can normally make use of the $home variable to refer to your home directory. The save command automatically inserts $home at the start of non-absolute paths.

3.8 Signicant deliveries

When in the course of delivery a message is processed by a lter le, what happens next, that is, after the lter le has been processed, depends on whether or not the lter sets up any signicant deliveries. If at least one signicant delivery is set up, the lter is considered to have handled the entire delivery arrangements for the current address, and no further processing of the address takes place. If, however, no signicant deliveries are set up, Exim continues processing the current address as if there were no lter le, and typically sets up a delivery of a copy of the message into a local mailbox. In particular, this happens in the special case of a lter le containing only comments. The delivery commands deliver, save, and pipe are by default signicant. However, if such a command is preceded by the word unseen, its delivery is not considered to be signicant. In contrast, other commands such as mail and vacation do not set up signicant deliveries unless preceded by the word seen. The following example commands set up signicant deliveries: deliver [email protected] pipe $home/bin/mymailscript seen mail subject "message discarded" seen finish The following example commands do not set up signicant deliveries: unseen deliver [email protected] unseen pipe $home/bin/mymailscript mail subject "message discarded" finish

3.9 Filter commands

The lter commands that are described in subsequent sections are listed below, with the section in which they are described in brackets: add deliver fail nish freeze headers if logle logwrite mail increment a user variable (section 3.10) deliver to an email address (section 3.11) force delivery failure (sysadmin use) (section 3.18) end processing (section 3.16) freeze message (sysadmin use) (section 3.19) set the header character set (section 3.20) test condition(s) (section 3.21) dene log le (section 3.15) write to log le (section 3.15) send a reply message (section 3.14) 10 Exim lter les

pipe save testprint vacation

pipe to a command (section 3.13) save to a le (section 3.12) print while testing (section 3.17) tailored form of mail (section 3.14)

The headers command has additional parameters that can be used only in a system lter. The fail and freeze commands are available only when Exims ltering facilities are being used as a system lter, and are therefore usable only by the system administrator and not by ordinary users. They are mentioned only briefly in this document; for more information, see the main Exim specication.

3.10 The add command

add <number> to <user variable> e.g. add 2 to n3 There are 10 user variables of this type, with names $n0 $n9. Their values can be obtained by the normal expansion syntax (for example $n3) in other commands. At the start of ltering, these variables all contain zero. Both arguments of the add command are expanded before use, making it possible to add variables to each other. Subtraction can be obtained by adding negative numbers.

3.11 The deliver command

deliver <mail address> e.g. deliver "Dr Livingstone <[email protected]>" This command provides a forwarding operation. The delivery that it sets up is signicant unless the command is preceded by unseen (see section 3.8). The message is sent on to the given address, exactly as happens if the address had appeared in a traditional .forward le. If you want to deliver the message to a number of different addresses, you can use more than one deliver command (each one may have only one address). However, duplicate addresses are discarded. To deliver a copy of the message to your normal mailbox, your login name can be given as the address. Once an address has been processed by the ltering mechanism, an identical generated address will not be so processed again, so doing this does not cause a loop. However, if you have a mail alias, you should not refer to it here. For example, if the mail address L.Gulliver is aliased to lg303 then all references in Gullivers .forward le should be to lg303. A reference to the alias will not work for messages that are addressed to that alias, since, like .forward le processing, aliasing is performed only once on an address, in order to avoid looping. Following the new address, an optional second address, preceded by errors_to may appear. This changes the address to which delivery errors on the forwarded message will be sent. Instead of going to the messages original sender, they go to this new address. For ordinary users, the only value that is permitted for this address is the user whose lter le is being processed. For example, the user lg303 whose mailbox is in the domain lilliput.example could have a lter le that contains deliver [email protected] errors_to [email protected] Clearly, using this feature makes sense only in situations where not all messages are being forwarded. In particular, bounce messages must not be forwarded in this way, as this is likely to create a mail loop if something goes wrong.

3.12 The save command

save <le name> e.g. save $home/mail/bookfolder This command species that a copy of the message is to be appended to the given le (that is, the le is to be used as a mail folder). The delivery that save sets up is signicant unless the command is preceded by unseen (see section 3.8). More than one save command may be obeyed; each one causes a copy of the message to be written to its argument le, provided they are different (duplicate save commands are ignored). 11 Exim lter les

If the le name does not start with a / character, the contents of the $home variable are prepended, unless it is empty, or the system administrator has disabled this feature. In conventional congurations, this variable is normally set in a user lter to the users home directory, but the system administrator may set it to some other path. In some congurations, $home may be unset, or prepending may be disabled, in which case a non-absolute path name may be generated. Such congurations convert this to an absolute path when the delivery takes place. In a system lter, $home is never set. The user must of course have permission to write to the le, and the writing of the le takes place in a process that is running as the user, under the users primary group. Any secondary groups to which the user may belong are not normally taken into account, though the system administrator can congure Exim to set them up. In addition, the ability to use this command at all is controlled by the system administrator it may be forbidden on some systems. An optional mode value may be given after the le name. The value for the mode is interpreted as an octal number, even if it does not begin with a zero. For example: save /some/folder 640 This makes it possible for users to override the system-wide mode setting for le deliveries, which is normally 600. If an existing le does not have the correct mode, it is changed. An alternative form of delivery may be enabled on your system, in which each message is delivered into a new le in a given directory. If this is the case, this functionality can be requested by giving the directory name terminated by a slash after the save command, for example save separated/messages/ There are several different formats for such deliveries; check with your system administrator or local documentation to nd out which (if any) are available on your system. If this functionality is not enabled, the use of a path name ending in a slash causes an error.

3.13 The pipe command

pipe <command> e.g. pipe "$home/bin/countmail $sender_address" This command species that the message is to be delivered to the specied command using a pipe. The delivery that it sets up is signicant unless the command is preceded by unseen (see section 3.8). Remember, however, that no deliveries are done while the lter is being processed. All deliveries happen later on. Therefore, the result of running the pipe is not available to the lter. When the deliveries are done, a separate process is run, and a copy of the message is passed on its standard input. The process runs as the user, under the users primary group. Any secondary groups to which the user may belong are not normally taken into account, though the system administrator can congure Exim to set them up. More than one pipe command may appear; each one causes a copy of the message to be written to its argument pipe, provided they are different (duplicate pipe commands are ignored). When the time comes to transport the message, the command supplied to pipe is split up by Exim into a command name and a number of arguments. These are delimited by white space except for arguments enclosed in double quotes, in which case backslash is interpreted as an escape, or in single quotes, in which case no escaping is recognized. Note that as the whole command is normally supplied in double quotes, a second level of quoting is required for internal double quotes. For example: pipe "$home/myscript \"size is $message_size\"" String expansion is performed on the separate components after the line has been split up, and the command is then run directly by Exim; it is not run under a shell. Therefore, substitution cannot change the number of arguments, nor can quotes, backslashes or other shell metacharacters in variables cause confusion. 12 Exim lter les

Documentation for some programs that are normally run via this kind of pipe often suggest that the command should start with IFS=" " This is a shell command, and should not be present in Exim lter les, since it does not normally run the command under a shell. However, there is an option that the administrator can set to cause a shell to be used. In this case, the entire command is expanded as a single string and passed to the shell for interpretation. It is recommended that this be avoided if at all possible, since it can lead to problems when inserted variables contain shell metacharacters. The default PATH set up for the command is determined by the system administrator, usually containing at least /bin and /usr/bin so that common commands are available without having to specify an absolute le name. However, it is possible for the system administrator to restrict the pipe facility so that the command name must not contain any / characters, and must be found in one of the directories in the congured PATH. It is also possible for the system administrator to lock out the use of the pipe command altogether. When the command is run, a number of environment variables are set up. The complete list for pipe deliveries may be found in the Exim reference manual. Those that may be useful for pipe deliveries from user lter les are: DOMAIN HOME LOCAL_PART LOCAL_PART_PREFIX LOCAL_PART_SUFFIX LOGNAME MESSAGE_ID PATH RECIPIENT SENDER SHELL USER the domain of the address your home directory see below see below see below your login name the unique id of the message the command search path the complete recipient address the sender of the message /bin/sh see below

LOCAL_PART, LOGNAME, and USER are all set to the same value, namely, your login id. LOCAL_PART_PREFIX and LOCAL_PART_SUFFIX may be set if Exim is congured to recognize prexes or sufxes in the local parts of addresses. For example, a message addressed to [email protected] may cause the lter for user pat to be run. If this sets up a pipe delivery, LOCAL_PART_SUFFIX is -suf2 when the pipe command runs. The system administrator has to congure Exim specially for this feature to be available. If you run a command that is a shell script, be very careful in your use of data from the incoming message in the commands in your script. RFC 2822 is very generous in the characters that are permitted to appear in mail addresses, and in particular, an address may begin with a vertical bar or a slash. For this reason you should always use quotes round any arguments that involve data from the message, like this: /some/command '$SENDER' so that inserted shell meta-characters do not cause unwanted effects. Remember that, as was explained earlier, the pipe command is not run at the time the lter le is interpreted. The lter just denes what deliveries are required for one particular addressee of a message. The deliveries themselves happen later, once Exim has decided everything that needs to be done for the message. A consequence of this is that you cannot inspect the return code from the pipe command from within the lter. Nevertheless, the code returned by the command is important, because Exim uses it to decide whether the delivery has succeeded or failed. 13 Exim lter les

The command should return a zero completion code if all has gone well. Most non-zero codes are treated by Exim as indicating a failure of the pipe. This is treated as a delivery failure, causing the message to be returned to its sender. However, there are some completion codes that are treated as temporary errors. The message remains on Exims spool disk, and the delivery is tried again later, though it will ultimately time out if the delivery failures go on too long. The completion codes to which this applies can be specied by the system administrator; the default values are 73 and 75. The pipe command should not normally write anything to its standard output or standard error le descriptors. If it does, whatever is written is normally returned to the sender of the message as a delivery error, though this action can be varied by the system administrator.

3.14 Mail commands

There are two commands that cause the creation of a new mail message, neither of which count as a signicant delivery unless the command is preceded by the word seen (see section 3.8). This is a powerful facility, but it should be used with care, because of the danger of creating innite sequences of messages. The system administrator can forbid the use of these commands altogether. To help prevent runaway message sequences, these commands have no effect when the incoming message is a bounce (delivery error) message, and messages sent by this means are treated as if they were reporting delivery errors. Thus, they should never themselves cause a bounce message to be returned. The basic mail-sending command is mail [to <address-list>] [cc <address-list>] [bcc <address-list>] [from <address>] [reply_to <address>] [subject <text>] [extra_headers <text>] [text <text>] [[expand] file <lename>] [return message] [log <log le name>] [once <note le name>] [once_repeat <time interval>] e.g. mail text "Your message about $h_subject: has been received" Each <address-list> can contain a number of addresses, separated by commas, in the format of a To: or Cc: header line. In fact, the text you supply here is copied exactly into the appropriate header line. It may contain additional information as well as email addresses. For example: mail to "Julius Caesar <[email protected]>, \ <[email protected]> (Mark A.)" Similarly, the texts supplied for from and reply_to are copied into their respective header lines. As a convenience for use in one common case, there is also a command called vacation. It behaves in the same way as mail, except that the defaults for the subject, le, log, once, and once_repeat options are subject "On vacation" expand file .vacation.msg log .vacation.log once .vacation once_repeat 7d respectively. These are the same le names and repeat period used by the traditional Unix vacation command. The defaults can be overridden by explicit settings, but if a le name is given its contents are expanded only if explicitly requested. Warning: The vacation command should always be used conditionally, subject to at least the personal condition (see section 3.27 below) so as not to send automatic replies to non-personal messages 14 Exim lter les

from mailing lists or elsewhere. Sending an automatic response to a mailing list or a mailing list manager is an Internet Sin. For both commands, the key/value argument pairs can appear in any order. At least one of text or le must appear (except with vacation, where there is a default for le); if both are present, the text string appears rst in the message. If expand precedes le, each line of the le is subject to string expansion before it is included in the message. Several lines of text can be supplied to text by including the escape sequence \n in the string wherever a newline is required. If the command is output during lter le testing, newlines in the text are shown as \n. Note that the keyword for creating a Reply-To: header is reply_to, because Exim keywords may contain underscores, but not hyphens. If the from keyword is present and the given address does not match the user who owns the forward le, Exim normally adds a Sender: header to the message, though it can be congured not to do this. The extra_headers keyword allows you to add custom header lines to the message. The text supplied must be one or more syntactically valid RFC 2822 header lines. You can use \n within quoted text to specify newlines between headers, and also to dene continued header lines. For example: extra_headers "h1: first\nh2: second\n continued\nh3: third" No newline should appear at the end of the nal header line. If no to argument appears, the message is sent to the address in the $reply_address variable (see section 3.3 above). An In-Reply-To: header is automatically included in the created message, giving a reference to the message identication of the incoming message. If return message is specied, the incoming message that caused the lter le to be run is added to the end of the message, subject to a maximum size limitation. If a log le is specied, a line is added to it for each message sent. If a once le is specied, it is used to hold a database for remembering who has received a message, and no more than one message is ever sent to any particular address, unless once_repeat is set. This species a time interval after which another copy of the message is sent. The interval is specied as a sequence of numbers, each followed by the initial letter of one of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. For example, once_repeat 5d4h causes a new message to be sent if at least 5 days and 4 hours have elapsed since the last one was sent. There must be no white space in a time interval. Commonly, the le name specied for once is used as the base name for direct-access (DBM) le operations. There are a number of different DBM libraries in existence. Some operating systems provide one as a default, but even in this case a different one may have been used when building Exim. With some DBM libraries, specifying once results in two les being created, with the sufxes .dir and .pag being added to the given name. With some others a single le with the sufx .db is used, or the name is used unchanged. Using a DBM le for implementing the once feature means that the le grows as large as necessary. This is not usually a problem, but some system administrators want to put a limit on it. The facility can be congured not to use a DBM le, but instead, to use a regular le with a maximum size. The data in such a le is searched sequentially, and if the le lls up, the oldest entry is deleted to make way for a new one. This means that some correspondents may receive a second copy of the message after an unpredictable interval. Consult your local information to see if your system is congured this way. More than one mail or vacation command may be obeyed in a single lter run; they are all honoured, even when they are to the same recipient. 15 Exim lter les

3.15 Logging commands

A log can be kept of actions taken by a lter le. This facility is normally available in conventional congurations, but there are some situations where it might not be. Also, the system administrator may choose to disable it. Check your local information if in doubt. Logging takes place while the lter le is being interpreted. It does not queue up for later like the delivery commands. The reason for this is so that a log le need be opened only once for several write operations. There are two commands, neither of which constitutes a signicant delivery. The rst denes a le to which logging output is subsequently written: logfile <le name> e.g. logfile $home/filter.log The le name must be fully qualied. You can use $home, as in this example, to refer to your home directory. The le name may optionally be followed by a mode for the le, which is used if the le has to be created. For example, logfile $home/filter.log 0644 The number is interpreted as octal, even if it does not begin with a zero. The default for the mode is 600. It is suggested that the logle command normally appear as the rst command in a lter le. Once a log le has been obeyed, the logwrite command can be used to write to it: logwrite "<some text string>" e.g. logwrite "$tod_log $message_id processed" It is possible to have more than one logle command, to specify writing to different log les in different circumstances. Writing takes place at the end of the le, and a newline character is added to the end of each string if there isnt one already there. Newlines can be put in the middle of the string by using the \n escape sequence. Lines from simultaneous deliveries may get interleaved in the le, as there is no interlocking, so you should plan your logging with this in mind. However, data should not get lost.

3.16 The nish command

The command nish, which has no arguments, causes Exim to stop interpreting the lter le. This is not a signicant action unless preceded by seen. A lter le containing only seen nish is a black hole.

3.17 The testprint command

It is sometimes helpful to be able to print out the values of variables when testing lter les. The command testprint <text> e.g. testprint "home=$home reply_address=$reply_address" does nothing when mail is being delivered. However, when the ltering code is being tested by means of the -bf option (see section 1.3 above), the value of the string is written to the standard output.

3.18 The fail command

When Exims ltering facilities are being used as a system lter, the fail command is available, to force delivery failure. Because this command is normally usable only by the system administrator, and not enabled for use by ordinary users, it is described in more detail in the main Exim specication rather than in this document.

3.19 The freeze command

When Exims ltering facilities are being used as a system lter, the freeze command is available, to freeze a message on the queue. Because this command is normally usable only by the system admin16 Exim lter les

istrator, and not enabled for use by ordinary users, it is described in more detail in the main Exim specication rather than in this document.

3.20 The headers command

The headers command can be used to change the target character set that is used when translating the contents of encoded header lines for insertion by the $header_ mechanism (see section 3.5 above). The default can be set in the Exim conguration; if not specied, ISO-8859-1 is used. The only currently supported format for the headers command in user lters is as in this example: headers charset "UTF-8" That is, headers is followed by the word charset and then the name of a character set. This particular example would be useful if you wanted to compare the contents of a header to a UTF-8 string. In system lter les, the headers command can be used to add or remove header lines from the message. These features are described in the main Exim specication.

3.21 Obeying commands conditionally

Most of the power of ltering comes from the ability to test conditions and obey different commands depending on the outcome. The if command is used to specify conditional execution, and its general form is if then elif then else endif <condition> <commands> <condition> <commands> <commands>

There may be any number of elif and then sections (including none) and the else section is also optional. Any number of commands, including nested if commands, may appear in any of the <commands> sections. Conditions can be combined by using the words and and or, and round brackets (parentheses) can be used to specify how several conditions are to combine. Without brackets, and is more binding than or. For example: if $h_subject: contains "Make money" or $h_precedence: is "junk" or ($h_sender: matches ^\\d{8}@ and not personal) or $message_body contains "this is not spam" then seen finish endif A condition can be preceded by not to negate it, and there are also some negative forms of condition that are more English-like.

3.22 String testing conditions

There are a number of conditions that operate on text strings, using the words begins, ends, is, contains and matches. If you want to apply the same test to more than one header line, you can easily concatenate them into a single string for testing, as in this example: if "$h_to:, $h_cc:" contains [email protected] then ... If a string-testing condition name is written in lower case, the testing of letters is done without regard to case; if it is written in upper case (for example, CONTAINS), the case of letters is taken into account. 17 Exim lter les

<text1> begins <text2> <text1> does not begin <text2> e.g. $header_from: begins "Friend@" A begins test checks for the presence of the second string at the start of the rst, both strings having been expanded. <text1> ends <text2> <text1> does not end <text2> e.g. $header_from: ends "public.com.example" An ends test checks for the presence of the second string at the end of the rst, both strings having been expanded. <text1> is <text2> <text1> is not <text2> e.g. $local_part_suffix is "-foo" An is test does an exact match between the strings, having rst expanded both strings. <text1> contains <text2> <text1> does not contain <text2> e.g. $header_subject: contains "evolution" A contains test does a partial string match, having expanded both strings. <text1> matches <text2> <text1> does not match <text2> e.g. $sender_address matches "(bill|john)@" For a matches test, after expansion of both strings, the second one is interpreted as a regular expression. Exim uses the PCRE regular expression library, which provides regular expressions that are compatible with Perl. The match succeeds if the regular expression matches any part of the rst string. If you want a regular expression to match only at the start or end of the subject string, you must encode that requirement explicitly, using the ^ or $ metacharacters. The above example, which is not so constrained, matches all these addresses: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] To match only the rst two, you could use this: if $sender_address matches "^(bill|john)@" then ... Care must be taken if you need a backslash in a regular expression, because backslashes are interpreted as escape characters both by the string expansion code and by Exims normal processing of strings in quotes. For example, if you want to test the sender address for a domain ending in .com the regular expression is \.com$ The backslash and dollar sign in that expression have to be escaped when used in a lter command, as otherwise they would be interpreted by the expansion code. Thus, what you actually write is if $sender_address matches \\.com\$ An alternative way of handling this is to make use of the \N expansion flag for suppressing expansion: if $sender_address matches \N\.com$\N Everything between the two occurrences of \N is copied without change by the string expander (and in fact you do not need the nal one, because it is at the end of the string). If the regular expression is given in quotes (mandatory only if it contains white space) you have to write either 18 Exim lter les

if $sender_address matches "\\\\.com\\$" or if $sender_address matches "\\N\\.com$\\N" If the regular expression contains bracketed sub-expressions, numeric variable substitutions such as $1 can be used in the subsequent actions after a successful match. If the match fails, the values of the numeric variables remain unchanged. Previous values are not restored after endif. In other words, only one set of values is ever available. If the condition contains several sub-conditions connected by and or or, it is the strings extracted from the last successful match that are available in subsequent actions. Numeric variables from any one sub-condition are also available for use in subsequent sub-conditions, because string expansion of a condition occurs just before it is tested.

3.23 Numeric testing conditions

The following conditions are available for performing numerical tests: <number1> is above <number2> <number1> is not above <number2> <number1> is below <number2> <number1> is not below <number2> e.g. $message_size is not above 10k The <number> arguments must expand to strings of digits, optionally followed by one of the letters K or M (upper case or lower case) which cause multiplication by 1024 and 1024x1024 respectively.

3.24 Testing for signicant deliveries

You can use the delivered condition to test whether or not any previously obeyed lter commands have set up a signicant delivery. For example: if not delivered then save mail/anomalous endif Delivered is perhaps a poor choice of name for this condition, because the message has not actually been delivered; rather, a delivery has been set up for later processing.

3.25 Testing for error messages

The condition error_message is true if the incoming message is a bounce (mail delivery error) message. Putting the command if error_message then finish endif at the head of your lter le is a useful insurance against things going wrong in such a way that you cannot receive delivery error reports. Note: error_message is a condition, not an expansion variable, and therefore is not preceded by $.

3.26 Testing a list of addresses

There is a facility for looping through a list of addresses and applying a condition to each of them. It takes the form foranyaddress <string> (<condition>) where <string> is interpreted as a list of RFC 2822 addresses, as in a typical header line, and <condition> is any valid lter condition or combination of conditions. The group syntax that is dened for certain header lines that contain addresses is supported. The parentheses surrounding the condition are mandatory, to delimit it from possible further subconditions of the enclosing if command. Within the condition, the expansion variable $thisaddress is set to the non-comment portion of each of the addresses in the string in turn. For example, if the string is 19 Exim lter les

B.Simpson <[email protected]>, [email protected] (his sister) then $thisaddress would take on the values [email protected] and [email protected] in turn. If there are no valid addresses in the list, the whole condition is false. If the internal condition is true for any one address, the overall condition is true and the loop ends. If the internal condition is false for all addresses in the list, the overall condition is false. This example tests for the presence of an eight-digit local part in any address in a To: header: if foranyaddress $h_to: ( $thisaddress matches ^\\d{8}@ ) then ... When the overall condition is true, the value of $thisaddress in the commands that follow then is the last value it took on inside the loop. At the end of the if command, the value of $thisaddress is reset to what it was before. It is best to avoid the use of multiple occurrences of foranyaddress, nested or otherwise, in a single if command, if the value of $thisaddress is to be used afterwards, because it isnt always clear what the value will be. Nested if commands should be used instead. Header lines can be joined together if a check is to be applied to more than one of them. For example: if foranyaddress $h_to:,$h_cc: .... This scans through the addresses in both the To: and the Cc: headers.

3.27 Testing for personal mail

A common requirement is to distinguish between incoming personal mail and mail from a mailing list, or from a robot or other automatic process (for example, a bounce message). In particular, this test is normally required for vacation messages. The personal condition checks that the message is not a bounce message and that the current users email address appears in the To: header. It also checks that the sender is not the current user or one of a number of common daemons, and that there are no header lines starting List- in the message. Finally, it checks the content of the Precedence: header line, if there is one. You should always use the personal condition when generating automatic responses. This example shows the use of personal in a lter le that is sending out vacation messages: if personal then mail to $reply_address subject "I am on holiday" file $home/vacation/message once $home/vacation/once once_repeat 10d endif It is tempting, when writing commands like the above, to quote the original subject in the reply. For example: subject "Re: $h_subject:" There is a danger in doing this, however. It may allow a third party to subscribe you to an opt-in mailing list, provided that the list accepts bounce messages as subscription conrmations. (Messages sent from lters are always sent as bounce messages.) Well-managed lists require a non-bounce message to conrm a subscription, so the danger is relatively small. If prexes or sufxes are in use for local parts something which depends on the conguration of Exim (see section 3.31 below) the tests for the current user are done with the full address (including the prex and sufx, if any) as well as with the prex and sufx removed. If the system is congured to rewrite local parts of mail addresses, for example, to rewrite dag46 as Dirk.Gently, the rewritten form of the address is also used in the tests. 20 Exim lter les

3.28 Alias addresses for the personal condition

It is quite common for people who have mail accounts on a number of different systems to forward all their mail to one system, and in this case a check for personal mail should test all their various mail addresses. To allow for this, the personal condition keyword can be followed by alias <address> any number of times, for example: if personal alias [email protected] alias [email protected] then ... The alias addresses are treated as alternatives to the current users email address when testing the contents of header lines.

3.29 Details of the personal condition

The basic personal test is roughly equivalent to the following: not error_message and $message_headers does not contain "\nList-Id:" and $message_headers does not contain "\nList-Help:" and $message_headers does not contain "\nList-Subscribe:" and $message_headers does not contain "\nList-Unsubscribe:" and $message_headers does not contain "\nList-Post:" and $message_headers does not contain "\nList-Owner:" and $message_headers does not contain "\nList-Archive:" and ( "${if def:h_auto-submitted:{present}{absent}}" is "absent" or $header_auto-submitted: is "no" ) and $header_precedence: does not contain "bulk" and $header_precedence: does not contain "list" and $header_precedence: does not contain "junk" and foranyaddress $header_to: ( $thisaddress contains "$local_part$domain" ) and not foranyaddress $header_from: ( $thisaddress contains "$local_part@$domain" or $thisaddress contains "server@" or $thisaddress contains "daemon@" or $thisaddress contains "root@" or $thisaddress contains "listserv@" or $thisaddress contains "majordomo@" or $thisaddress contains "-request@" or $thisaddress matches "^owner-[^@]+@" ) The variable $local_part contains the local part of the mail address of the user whose lter le is being run it is normally your login id. The $domain variable contains the mail domain. As explained above, if aliases or rewriting are dened, or if prexes or sufxes are in use, the tests for the current user are also done with alternative addresses.

3.30 Testing delivery status

There are two conditions that are intended mainly for use in system lter les, but which are available in users lter les as well. The condition rst_delivery is true if this is the rst process that is attempting to deliver the message, and false otherwise. This indicator is not reset until the rst 21 Exim lter les

delivery process successfully terminates; if there is a crash or a power failure (for example), the next delivery attempt is also a rst delivery. In a user lter le rst_delivery will be false if there was previously an error in the lter, or if a delivery for the user failed owing to, for example, a quota error, or if forwarding to a remote address was deferred for some reason. The condition manually_thawed is true if the message was frozen for some reason, and was subsequently released by the system administrator. It is unlikely to be of use in users lter les.

3.31 Multiple personal mailboxes

The system administrator can congure Exim so that users can set up variants on their email addresses and handle them separately. Consult your system administrator or local documentation to see if this facility is enabled on your system, and if so, what the details are. The facility involves the use of a prex or a sufx on an email address. For example, all mail addressed to lg303-<something> would be the property of user lg303, who could determine how it was to be handled, depending on the value of <something>. There are two possible ways in which this can be set up. The rst possibility is the use of multiple .forward les. In this case, mail to lg303-foo, for example, is handled by looking for a le called .forward-foo in lg303s home directory. If such a le does not exist, delivery fails and the message is returned to its sender. The alternative approach is to pass all messages through a single .forward le, which must be a lter le so that it can distinguish between the different cases by referencing the variables $local_part_prex or $local_part_sufx, as in the nal example in section 3.33 below. It is possible to congure Exim to support both schemes at once. In this case, a specic .forward-foo le is rst sought; if it is not found, the basic .forward le is used. The personal test (see section 3.27) includes prexes and sufxes in its checking.

3.32 Ignoring delivery errors

As was explained above, ltering just sets up addresses for delivery no deliveries are actually done while a lter le is active. If any of the generated addresses subsequently suffers a delivery failure, an error message is generated in the normal way. However, if a lter command that sets up a delivery is preceded by the word noerror, errors for that delivery, and any deliveries consequent on it (that is, from alias, forwarding, or lter les it invokes) are ignored.

3.33 Examples of Exim lter commands

Simple forwarding: # Exim filter deliver [email protected] Vacation handling using traditional means, assuming that the .vacation.msg and other les have been set up in your home directory: # Exim filter unseen pipe "/usr/ucb/vacation \"$local_part\"" Vacation handling inside Exim, having rst created a le called .vacation.msg in your home directory: # Exim filter if personal then vacation endif File some messages by subject: # Exim filter if $header_subject: contains "empire" or $header_subject: contains "foundation" 22 Exim lter les

then save $home/mail/f+e endif Save all non-urgent messages by weekday: # Exim filter if $header_subject: does not contain "urgent" and $tod_full matches "^(...)," then save $home/mail/$1 endif Throw away all mail from one site, except from postmaster: # Exim filter if $reply_address contains "@spam.site.example" and $reply_address does not contain "postmaster@" then seen finish endif Handle multiple personal mailboxes: # Exim filter if $local_part_suffix is "-foo" then save $home/mail/foo elif $local_part_suffix is "-bar" then save $home/mail/bar endif

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Exim lter les