What is procmail, and where can I get it?
The program “procmail” is a replacement for the local mailer (variously called /bin/mail, /usr/bin/mail, mail.local, rmail, etc…). It has been ported to run on virtually every Unix-like OS you’re likely to run into, and has a whole host of features. It is typically about 30% faster performing the job of the local mailer than programs such as /bin/mail or /usr/bin/mail, it has been hammered on widely to make it extremely secure (much more so than most local mailers) and very robust. Procmail is also capable of helping you put a quota on a user’s mailbox through the standard Unix quota mechanism (see Q4.3). In short, whatever you’ve got, you’re almost guaranteed that procmail is better (if nothing else, the author has been able to focus lots of time and energy into making it the best and fastest tool available, while most system vendors just throw something together as fast as they can and move on to the whole rest of the OS). However, this only begins to scratch the surface of what pr
