On 2012/08/22 04:33, Anne Wilson wrote:
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> On 21/08/12 20:02, Gerald Waugh wrote:
>>
>> On 08/21/2012 01:50 PM, Anne Wilson wrote:
>>> For reasons not relevant to this list, I've been using GMail to
>>> read my mail for a while, so I hadn't noticed that my local mail
>>> server now has big problems.
>>
>>> I see mail arriving there in maillog, and my .forward file
>>> passes it to procmail - but procmail appears to be not doing its
>>> stuff - the messages aren't being delivered at all.
>>
>>> What could be wrong?
>>
>>> Anne
>> What is in  your .procmailrc $HOME/.procmailrc
>>
> Thanks for answering.  .procmailrc is a restored file that worked
> perfectly before - I'll give you the details if you still want to see
> it after reading this.
>
> Digging around in logs I found that there have been some problems with
> perl updates - and I assume that procmail is a perl app.  It seems
> likely that I messed things up when setting repo priorities, so I set
> out to clean things up.
>
> First I removed the packages that wouldn't update, keeping a list so
> that I can restore them as soon as I have the problem sorted, and
> tweaked the priorities of rpmforge, since that seems to be the one
> that was missing out.  At first I thought that had done it, as I got a
> clean list of updates about to perform.  Unfortunately, I then got a
> transaction error -
>
> file /sbin/extlinux from install of syslinux-4.05-1.el6.rfx.x86_64
> conflicts with file from package syslinux-extlinux-4.02-4.el6.x86_64
>
> If I try to update the remaining packages as they stand at present I get
>
> Error: glibc-2.12-1.25.el6.i686 (sl)
>    Requires: glibc-common = 2.12-1.25.el6
>    Installed: glibc-common-2.12.1.47.el6_2.5.x86_64 (@sl-security)
>      glibc-common = 2.12.1.47.el6_2.5
>    Available: glibc-common-2.12-1.25.el6.x86_64 (sl)
>      glibc-common = 2.12-1.25.el6
>
> I thought of removing glibc, again, to instantly re-install, to ensure
> I got the right version, but that promises to remove hundreds of
> packages, so I abandoned that idea.
>
> By now I am completely out of my depth.  Is it possible to repair this
> system, or would be simpler to just abandon it, and try a clean
> install, setting up everything afresh?  I hate to be beaten, but a
> broken system is a liability.

Anne, procmail is not in any way related to perl. It is a modest ELF
binary executable.

So let's start with some basics. Is there an /etc/procmailrc file? What
does it look like. What does your home directory's .procmailrc file look
like? Procmail has been solid for me for two decades or so now. It has
also grown as I put in "discard with extreme prejudice" anti-troll
measures. (That would be sites that require me to verify I am really
me before they will forward a mailing list email to the customer, for
example.) Make sure you have no such filters in your .procmailrc file.

Generally consider procmail as a filter. Text goes in, is manipulated,
and usually flows out the other end ultimately into the user's mailbox.
You CAN cozen procmail into inserting log messages as it processes emails.
(Heck, I had mine rigged to play chimes when I received customer emails at
one time.)

If you have log messages of these emails going into procmail then it is
time to get procmail to tell you what it is doing. You CAN set a "VERBOSE"
flag, "VERBOSE=yes". That gets it to spit out error messages of some use.
Note that sigs USR1 will turn off VERBOSE and USR2 will turn it on.

Note that this little incantation right after any defines in .procmailrc
will preserve emails so you can manually process them after splitting
the email out of the destination file using "mail -f$HOME/mail/rawmbox":
:0c: clone.lock
$HOME/mail/rawmbox

Then you can run procmail manually with a copy of your .procmailrc and
figure out pretty decently what is actually going on.

{^_^}