NAME

archivesmtp — SMTP mail archiver

SYNOPSIS

archivesmtp

[-abdhnv] [-r pidfile] [-t timeout] [-u username] -f filename -p port

DESCRIPTION

archivesmtp uses rule based matching to collect local copies of mail passing through the MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) using the milter library interface.

Supported options are as follows:

-a

Always store mail. By default archivesmtp will always allow mail to pass. This option causes mail to be rejected with a temporary failure message should something prevent its storage. Use with care, simply having a rule with a path that is not writable would result in all messages that match the rule being rejected.

-b

Detach from the terminal and run in the background (daemonise process). This will cause all output to be sent to /dev/null and the working directory to be set to /.

-d

Don't unlink local or unix domain sockets prior to attempting to open them, if they exist the open will fail and the program will exit with an error. In normal operating conditions the socket would be unlinked when the program exits, thus the existence of the socket would suggest the program is already running. However the socket could be left behind if the program was unable to exit cleanly. *NOTE: When running as root the socket will NEVER be removed on exit.

-f filename

Filename of the configuration file to use. For the format of this file check the CONFIGURATION section of this man page. This argument is required.

-h

Help. Prints the usage string and then exits.

-n

No run. Parses configuration file and prints out the rules that would be created by it, then exits. Useful for testing that a configuration file has no syntax errors.

-p port

Port to use for communications with MTA, can be of type unix, local or inet. For example: unix:/var/run/archivesmtp/f1.sock. This argument is required. *NOTE: If using unix or local socket and the file exists it will be DELETED unless running with the -d option.

-r pidfile

Running processes pid will be stored in this file. The path must be readable and writable by the user archivesmtp is running as.

-t timeout

Timeout value for communication between archivesmtp and the MTA in seconds. The default value of 7210 will be used if this flag is not given (Note: Zero (0) does NOT mean wait forever, but rather do not wait at all).

-u username

Username to run as. This can only be set by the root user, it is recommended that you do NOT run archivesmtp as root.

-v

Verbose output to stdout. Add multiple v's to increase level of verbosity (currently two is the highest level used).

CONFIGURATION

The configuration file contains a list of rules that when matched will cause the listed actions specified by that rule to be performed. Rules are evaluated in the order they appear and evaluation will continue regardless of the success or failure of the previous rule to match, unless Halt was given as one of the rules actions.

Each rule is made up of two parts, the rule body which contains all the conditions of the rule and is contained between an opening { and closing } bracket followed by a list of comma separated actions to perform if the rule matches. The rule is terminated by a semi-colon.

{ rule_body } action_list;

The rule body consists of one or more conditions which are separated by the Or and And key words. Conditions can also be grouped between opening ( and closing ) brackets.

{ condition1 or (condition2 and condition3) }

Each condition is made up of three values, the field to match against, the part of the field to match against and finally the string to match. Valid fields are Sender, From or To and the parts that can be matched are Start, End, Contains or Is. The string to match can be quoted and honours backslash \ escapes, if not quoted it is white space delimited. The string match will be case insensitive except in the case of Sender, since usernames are case sensitive while mail addresses are not. All conditions may be negated using the ! character before them, this includes brackets.

{ Field Part String }

Fields:

Sender

The username of the sender from SMTP Auth (or null if not auth'd)

From

The address given in the From: header of the mail

To

All recipients of the mail, including To:, Cc: and Bcc:

Parts:

Start

Matches string against the start of the field

End

Matches string against the end of the field

Contains

Matches string against any part of the field

Is

Matches if the string and field are the same

There are also two special conditions that need no part or string:

Not Matched

Matches if no previous rule has matched this mail

Match All

Matches everything

The action list consists of one or more actions separated by commas, each action has a type and a single string containing all arguments. The rule is terminated after the last action by a semi-colon. There must be at least one action.

action1_type arguments, action2_type arguments;

Actions:

Store In

Stores the matching mail to the file specified in the argument

Add Header

Adds a header to the matching mail, the argument format is "field:value"

Pipe

Executes the program specified in the argument and pipes the mail data to that programs standard input

Halt

Flags that should this rule match, no further matching will be performed after processing its actions. Has no arguments.

Action arguments support token substitution. Tokens are in UPPER CASE and marked by a % symbol at the start and end. All tokens support the addition of .USER or .DOMAIN to substitute only that part of the address, by default they insert the whole address. You may use an unlimited amount of tokens.

Tokens:

%%

Inserts a literal % character

%SENDER%

Inserts the username of the sender if it has been set

%FROM%

Inserts the address set in the from header

%TO%

Inserts the FIRST matched address in the to header

%ALLTO%

This special case token will cause the action it appears in to be performed once for every matched address in the to header, substituting a different one each time

*Note: Both the TO and ALLTO tokens require at least one To condition to be tested and matched by the rule they are part of, otherwise they will be empty.

So an example rule may be as follows:

{ Sender Starts "bob" Or From Contains "bob" and (To Ends "@domain.com" Or To Ends "@other.com") } Store In /home/%SENDER.USER%/mail.mbox, Halt;

Please take a look at the sample configuration file for more examples.

Authors

Dancing Fortune Software - http://www.dancingfortune.com

SEE ALSO

http://www.dancingfortune.com/projects/archivesmtp/