When a mail item arrives and is passed to the Procmail program, the sequence of operations follows a set format. It starts by loading the various configuration files to obtain the rules that have been set up for that particular user. The message is then tested by each of these rules in turn and when a suitable match is made, the rule is applied. Some rules terminate when they have completed, while others return control so that the message can be assessed against remaining rules for potential processing.
The system-wide configuration is normally made in /etc/procmailrc
, while personal configuration files are normally stored in the user's home directory and called .procmailrc
. Individual rules can be stored in separate files or grouped together into a number of files and then included as part of the mail filtering process by the main .procmailrc
file. Typically these files would be stored in the Procmail
subdirectory of your home directory.