This page explains how to use Exim's built-in per-user filtering system to sort your mail into different folders or deliver it elsewhere.
Contents
Introduction
We use Exim as our mail daemon. It has a built-in filtering system that allows people to write a ".forward file" to give it custom instructions. Normally this is stored at ~/.forward, but at HCoop we store it at ~/.public/.forward to make it easier to keep the rest of your home directory private. So when we say ".forward" on the rest of this page, we mean ~/.public/.forward.
When email is delivered, the delivery process will run as the USER.daemon user, where USER is your HCoop username.
Delivering all mail to a different address
If you want email sent to your HCoop email address to be forwarded elsewhere, you can do that as follows.
Make a .public/.forward file in your home directory.
- It should contain only one line, consisting of just the e-mail address to which mail should be forwarded.
(This is a standard UNIX .forward file.)
Putting mail into separate folders
For anything more complicated, you have two options: sieve and exim filters. In StephenMichel's opinion, sieve filters have the saner syntax, although exim filters are slightly more powerful. To use them, start your .public/.forward file with one of these special lines for identifying the type of filter:
# Exim filter
# Sieve filter
The line above is not an ordinary comment. Any other values will cause Exim to attempt to treat the file as a list of forward addresses instead of a filter file.
Create folders before adding rules for them. Exim is not able to create new folders, only sort mail into existing ones. You should create and subscribe to any folders mentioned in these filters from within your IMAP client before adding them to your filter.
Sieve Filter Examples
StephenMichel
Lessons learned the hard way
If your script has a syntax error, and parsing reaches that point in the script, mail will simply not be delivered. Always send yourself a test email after making changes.
Probably due to our AFS setup, the only filing syntax that seems to work is fileinto, using an absolute path. keep does not work, including automatic/implicit keep, so you must explicitly fileinto your inbox.
If you just want quick examples, use the section below, fastmail's guide, or ProtonMail's guide. However, if you want to actually understand what you're doing & what's possible, all the various articles out there really suck; fortunately (and surprisingly) rfc 5228 itself is relatively light reading and you'll save yourself a lot of time starting there instead of searching for a more "consumer-facing" explanation.
This is my current filter, with two changes:
- Removed rules that were identical in syntax, just with different values
Changed all domains to example.com, to prevent spambots picking up anyone's email address off this page.
# Sieve filter
require ["fileinto"];
if address :contains ["to", "cc", "bcc"] ["admin@example.com", "community@example.com", "privacy@example.com"] {
fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/.snowdrift.aliases/";
}
elsif address :contains :domain "to" "lists.example.com" {
fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/.hcoop/";
}
# elsif address :matches ["to", "cc", "bcc"] ["snowdrift@example.com", "snowdrift+*@example.com"] {
# fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/.snowdrift/";
# }
elsif address :contains ["to", "from", "cc", "bcc"] "board@example.com" {
fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/.Board/";
}
elsif address :contains "from" "notifications@example.com" {
fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/.notifications.GitHub/";
}
elsif header :matches "Reply-To" "*@boards.example.com" {
fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/.notifications.Trello/";
}
elsif address :contains "to" "hnreplies.com@example.com" {
fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/.notifications.HN/";
}
elsif allof (
address :contains "from" "admin@example.com",
header :contains "subject" "[Lutris] Your daily moderator mail"
) {
fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/.lutris/";
}
else {
fileinto "/afs/hcoop.net/user/s/sm/smichel17/Maildir/";
}
stop;
Exim Filter Examples
The exim project website has some good examples http://www.exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/filter_ch-exim_filter_files.html.
We also have example .public.forward files in the following section.
NathanKennedy
It is possible to set up custom filters to do fancy things based on the X-Spam-Level: header. Here is NathanKennedy's ~/.public/.forward file. He finds that the default setting of 5.0 is too wimpy, and lets too much spam into his inbox. Virtually no ham that he gets scores less than 3.0, whereas a lot of spam scores less than 5.0, so he'd rather have anything over 3.0 go to his Junk folder. At the same time, he doesn't want to waste time, cycles, disk space or bandwidth with spam over 9.0. Most of his spam does score 9.0, and this goes straight to /dev/null (immediately disposed of) with this filter.
Finally, he has all HCoop list email go into a special HCoop folder.
Without further ado:
# Exim filter
logfile $home/.logs/mail/spamlog
if $header_subject contains "[HCoop"
then
save $home/Maildir/.HCoop/
finish
endif
if
"${if def:h_X-Spam-Level {def}{undef}}" is "def"
then
if $h_X-Spam-Level: begins "\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*"
then save "/dev/null" 660
else
if $h_X-Spam-Level: begins "\*\*\*"
then save $home/Maildir/.Junk/
endif
endif
finish
endif
if
"${if def:h_X-Spam-Flag {def}{undef}}" is "def"
then
save $home/Maildir/.Junk/
finish
endif
FrankBynum
# Exim filter
# Lists
if $h_to: contains "lists.hcoop.net"
then save $home/Maildir/.Causes.Hcoop/
elif $h_to: contains "groups.barackobama.com"
then save $home/Maildir/.Causes.Obama/
elif $h_X-Generated-By: CONTAINS "Launchpad"
then save $home/Maildir/.Causes.Floss/
# Junk
elif $h_X-Spam-Level: begins "\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*"
then save "/dev/null" 660
elif $h_X-Spam-Level: begins "\*\*\*\*"
then save $home/Maildir/.Junk.Spam/
elif $h_X-Spam-Status: contains "BAYES_99"
then save $home/Maildir/.Junk.Bayes_99/
endif
StephenMichel
This template filters anything sent to me@example.com or to me+$anything@example.com into the sub-folder me. This is useful if you have one or more aliases set up, to filter mail for each alias into its own subfolder.
if "$h_to:, $h_cc:, $h_bcc:" matches "me(\\\\+[\\^@]\\*)\\?@example\\\\.com"
then save $home/Maildir/.me/
endif
Björn Lindström
Some rules using matches which allows PCRE style regular expressions.
# Exim filter
# Log
logfile $home/.logs/mail/exim.log
# Don't do any filtering on delivery failure messages from Exim.
if error_message then finish endif
# Spam
if "${if def:h_X-Spam-Level {def}{undef}}" is "def" then
# Drops mail with a spam level above 9
if $h_X-Spam-Level: matches "^\\\\*{9}" then
seen
finish
# Puts other mail with a spam level above 3 into "Spam"
elif $h_X-Spam-Level: matches "^\\\\*{3}" then
save $home/Maildir/.Spam/
finish
endif
elif "${if def:h_X-Spam-Flag {def}{undef}}" is "def" then
# Puts other mail with spam flag set into "Spam" also.
save $home/Maildir/.Spam/
finish
endif
# Filter into folders
if "$h_to:, $h_cc:, $h_bcc:" matches "\\\\b((bkhl|upp?sala|relax)@fandom\\\\.se|upp?salafandom@dang\\\\.se|fanac@lists\\\\.lysator\\\\.liu\\\\.se)\\\\b" then
save $home/Maildir/.Fandom/
elif "$h_to:, $h_cc:, $h_bcc:" matches "@(\\.*\\\\.)?hcoop\\\\.net\\\\b" then
save $home/Maildir/.HCoop/
endif
Filtering out bogus bounce messages
AdamChlipala found a trick a while back that allows you to filter out bogus bounce messages. https://lists.hcoop.net/pipermail/hcoop-discuss/2007-January/000745.html