Is there some way that I can block messages sent by "mail" from
certain people.  Sorta like a twit filter for mail?  There are a few
people I'd like to block out.     -Vidar

69 responses total.

There are all sorts of ways to accomplish this.  What are you using as a
mail program?  If it's elm, there are provisions for setting up a filter
to take various actions on received mail - including junking it conditionally.
(Someone who's actually *used* this had better provide the details - but
you *could* also read the doc, which is the man page and files under
/usr/local/lib/elm.)  I presume pine provides similar functionality.
The absolute worst case is that you write a script to copy your in box
to another file, stripping out unwanted messages - and then overwrite your
in box with nothing or otherwise kill its contents - and read the resulting
file with whatever tool you choose.  (Your in box is a file whose name is
your login ID, located in /usr/spool/mail.  You don't want to actually
*delete* this file, BTW.)

I use simply "mail" as my mailer.  It's simple and that's why I use it. 
If typing "mail" actually uses another program, I need to know which one.
Thanks for the info.

You don't need to use Elm as your mail program to use the Elm mail
filter, which is a separate program.  Pretending for the moment that
you wanted to delete all the mail I sent to you, you would need
a .forward file that contained:

        "| /usr/local/bin/filter -o /dev/console"

(Include the quotation marks, they're important!)  Then, you would
create a directory .elm, and within that directory, you'd want a
file named filter-rules that said:

        if (from = "robh") then delete

Then, I could send you mail all the live-long day, and you'd never
get any of it.  For multiple users you don't want to get mail from,
just put additional lines in .elm/filter-rules.  If you need help setting
it up, let me know.

Where does it put the messages that *don't* get deleted? Do they go into
your regular in box?

Thanks for the info, BTW.
The Elm Filter Guide, to which the man on Filter refers, is the files
/usr/local/lib/elm/doc/Filter.fmtd   and   /usr/local/lib/elm/doc/Filter.guid
(the former being suitable for cat, the latter needing some kind of nroff
processing).

Thanks for the info.  I've just filtered out four annoying people.

But then, you won't know what people are saying about you behind yor
back". And you won't be able to make witty, or cutting, combacks. 
Isn't that a "fool's paradise"?

Re #4 - Yup, they go into your regular incoming mailbox.  You can
then use whatever mail program you want to read them.

Re #6 - True, but I've been using the twit filter here in PicoSpan
for several months, and it's definitely made it a nicer place to
be.  Sometimes ignorance can be bliss.

But how do I create directories?  I don't know unix very well.

From a Unix prompt - "mkdir .elm" (without quotes) to create
the directory, "cd .elm" to put yourself into the directory.

Thanks, I tink I'll freeze this item now.

Well, since you haven't, when the mailer lists the email, you can
always just    d #  and string out the numbers until you include
all the ones you don't want. Sure, that's manual, but it works.

The only place I like manual transmition is in a car, thank you.
Life is now a little more peaceful since I've filtered out people.
Now all souces of all possible problems have been completely eredicated.

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Fine with me.  I don't think the topic is quite dead yet either.
\
<:-)
/

I think the only pattern matching you can do in the ELM index is by
subject, though I could be wrong about that.

This may be an ignorant question, but can other people in Grex read mail that
saved or otherwise sent to me ?

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Um, Valerie, I know you're trying to keep it basic, but be fair.

John:
Anyone with root access is in a position to read any file on the system.
I'm in fact quite sure that we don't have anyone here with root who makes
a habit of browsing through users' unreadable files - they're all pretty
busy trying to grex on their own AFTER doing whatever staff functions have
led them to have root access!  But in general, you should never assume
that ANY file on ANY Unix system ANYWHERE is completely secure.  If
you want it unread, encrypt it - even that's not perfect, but it's as
close as you'll get short of running only your own system that you never
connect to anything else.

In particular, if you send or receive email through the net, it will have
gone through a lot of systems, sitting on various of them for various
(usually brief) periods of time, & you have no way of knowing who has
access on all those systems.  So, for example, you should never include
a credit-card number in email without encryption.  I'm told (no personal
horror story or anything) that there are people out there who like to
scan messages as they pass by just pulling out lines containing numbers
with the formats of credit-card numbers, which they can then try.

So, I'm making a somewhat technical point - but you don't say what
level of security you're worried about.  What Valerie gave you is a
basic introduction to protection against ordinary users, & that is
the most important thing, really.  But if you're (say) saving email
about how to crash Grex & then going out & trying it, some staff member
may have occasion to look at your files.  If you're (say) saving
500MB mail files, and suddenly no one else can do anything, some staff
member looking for files to clean up is very likely to look at your
file, I'd guess.  And if your mail goes through the net, there are LOTS
of people with the ability to read it.

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agreed

My question was whether grex users could read my "mail"
Point well taken about sending mail.
Another "dumb" question, Popcorn, were the commands given Unix 
commands?  Can you name any outside books that would explain
this (response 18 & 19) indepth.  Thanks

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Can we start another Religious war on what mailer is 
the best now?  <grin>

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It's good at sorting your mail (I've heard).

Is it available here, I want ot try it after a source of
mine recommended it highly.

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In contrast to monolithic mail-handling programs like elm and pine, mh
is actually a collection of programs -- each program handles one
specific mail-related task.  So you run one program to read messages,
another to reply, another to forward, etc.  Conventionally, the
programs are stored in a directory named "mh" under /usr/local/bin.  I
guess whoever installed mh here decided to put all the programs in
/usr/local/bin and set up the symbolic link so that they could all be
found via the path /usr/local/bin/mh.  This has the advantage that you
don't have to put an extra directory on your path -- having
/usr/local/bin on it is sufficient.

The man pages are  terse on MH, and refer users to a LOT of doc-
umentation that is probably not on line. 
  
SEE ALSO
     The RAND MH Message Handling System: User's Manual,
     The RAND MH Message Handling System: Tutorial,
     The RAND MH Message Handling System: The UCI BBoards  Facil-
     ity,
     MH.5: How to process 200 messages a day and still  get  some
     real work done

 
anybody know where to see copies of these. One note, though, this
is not a program just to "run and see what it does ..." 

Right, don't just run it, especially if you've got a lot of unread
mail.  I did that once on another system, and it split all several
dozen pending messages up into separate files with the "From " lines
stripped off so that my normal mail reader, elm, couldn't deal with
them.

Stripped the    From   lines????? (gasp!) Does MH use From:  instead?

Yes.  I believe that's ok behavior on mh's part.  If I've got it
straight, "From " lines aren't actually part of the message header, but
instead belong to the "envelope", to use official internet email
terminology -- perhaps "postmark" is an appropriate term for them.
Sufficient information for dealing with a mail message is supposed to
be contained in the headers.  Each header has a label that ends in a
colon -- "From:", "Sender:", "Date:", "Subject:", etc.

Some mailer readers, like elm, preserve the "From " lines when they
store messages in folders, and expect to find them there when the
folder is opened for reading.  So they can't handle folders created by
mh.

It would be nice if such aberrant behavior could be turned off.  I'm also
curious as to how messages are delimited - as that "From " line is what
elm, pine, and (I believe) anything that is dealing with the standard
inbox format uses to recognize the start of a new message.  Yes, any
mail program can use any format it chooses for files containing the mail
it extracts from the inbox - but since everyone has to read that one
format anyway, it's a convenient one for other purposes as well.

Sometimes...it's handy to have the "From" line when the "From:" line
is bogus.  Some mailers look to the former when the latter fails, at
least the offline mailer I use (yarn) does.

Re #35:  Mh delimits messages by storing each one in a seperate file.

I haven't studied mh real closely, so I don't know how configurable it is.

Mh is fairly configurable, but I don't know if the "^From " line
stripping is one of the things that can be configured.  My guess is that
it would require some minor hacks to the source, but I really don't know
for sure.

I doubt I'll need the information gathered herein again.  but just in case
I do, I shall remember item 81.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss