procmail Setup Under MkLinux (DR1)

If you're running MkLinux DR1 and having problems with slow mail delivery, try the following. You will need to be root.

Subject: Re: Is procmail slow, or is it me? From: Michael Rogers To: Paul DuBois Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 21:57:41 -0600 >Did you ever get any answer to this? I see the same thing, sending >mail to myself on my MkLinux machine. Yes, it turns out to be a question of permissions, as I learned from Petri Kaukasoina <kaukasoi@elektroni.ee.tut.fi>: Try to define LOGFILE in your .procmailrc file so you get error messages recorded in a file. I had the same 1 minute delay and the reason was that procmail could not create a lock file in /var/spool/mail directory. Check that the group of your /var/spool/mail directory is 'mail' and the group has the write permission. And check that procmail is sgid mail: ls -ld /usr/bin/procmail /var/spool/mail -rwx--s--x 1 root mail 53596 Feb 19 18:37 /usr/bin/procmail drwxrwxr-x 2 root mail 1024 Jul 3 12:06 /var/spool/mail I think this *definitely* should be in an FAQ, somewhere. I'm a little concerned about security -- anytime anything is suid or sgid, I get a little squeamish -- but procmail is definitely instantaneous now, and works just fine.

It can also be helpful to turn on procmail logging to get an idea of what procmail is doing. I did so by creating /etc/procmailrc with these contents:

    LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail

Then change directory into /var/log and create a blank log file:

    # cd /var/log
    # touch procmail
    # chmod 664 procmail

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Document written by: Paul DuBois, paul@snake.net
Last updated: Wednesday, 09 October 1996 15:22