For installation instructions see the INSTALL file.
----------------------
Procmail & formail mail processing package.
Copyright (c) 1990-1997, S.R. van den Berg, The Netherlands.

This procmail & formail mail processing package is being released
under the the terms of the GNU General Public License as published
by the Free Software Foundation as version 2 of the License.
For a copy of this license, see the file named COPYING included
with this package.

----------------------

Some might wonder: why release it under the GPL?  Well, several reasons:
1. People from the FSF contacted me about this and asked me to release it
   under a more "free" license than I was using before.
2. Since I have contributed to the FSF in the past and I do think they
   are pursuing a worthy cause, I decided to change my mind and allow
   this package to be distributed under the GPL.
3. Releasing it under any other "free" license would have resulted in
   me either not giving up enough rights, or giving up too many rights
   (neither one of the options were viable to me).

-------------------------- SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS -------------------------------

Any *NIX-alike (or POSIX compliant) system.

Sendmail, ZMailer, smail, MMDF, mailsurr or compatible mailers (in effect any
mailer that can process RFC-822 compliant mails).

For a fairly complete list of all C-library references done in the programs
see "src/includes.h".

------------------------------ DESCRIPTION -----------------------------------

The procmail mail processing program. (v3.11pre7 1997/04/28)

Can be used to create mail-servers, mailing lists, sort your incoming mail
into separate folders/files (real convenient when subscribing to one or more
mailing lists or for prioritising your mail), preprocess your mail, start
any programs upon mail arrival (e.g. to generate different chimes on your
workstation for different types of mail) or selectively forward certain
incoming mail automatically to someone.

Procmail can be used:
	- and installed by an unprivileged user (for himself only).
	- as a drop in replacement for the local delivery agent /bin/mail
	  (with biff/comsat support).
	- as a general mailfilter for whole groups of messages (e.g. when
	  called from within sendmail.cf rules).

The accompanying formail program enables you to generate autoreplies, split up
digests/mailboxes into the original messages, do some very simple
header-munging/extraction, or force mail into mail-format (with leading From
line).

----------------------

I made the utmost effort to make procmail as robust as any program can be
(every conceivable system error is caught *and* handled).

Since procmail is written entirely in C, it poses a very low impact
on your system's resources (under normal conditions, when you don't
start other programs/scripts from within it, it is faster and more
robust than the average /bin/mail you have on your system now).

Procmail was designed to deliver the mail under the worst conditions
(file system full, out of swap space, process table full, file table full,
missing support files, unavailable executables; it all doesn't matter).
Should (in the unlikely event) procmail be unable to deliver your mail
somewhere, the mail will bounce back to the sender or reenter the mailqueue
(your choice).

For a more extensive list of features see the FEATURES file.

----------------------

However, as with any program, bugs cannot be completely ruled out.
I tested the program extensively, and believe it should be relatively
bug free (no known bug at the time).  Should, however, anyone find any
bugs (highly unlikely :-), I would be pleased (well, sort of :-) to hear
about it.  Please send me the patches or bug report.
I'll look at them and will try to fix it in a future release.
(BTW, if you should find any spelling or grammar errors in these files,
don't hesitate to point them out to me; I like correct English just as much
as you do).

----------------------

I would like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude in particular
to these devoted users of the procmail-package.	 Without their constant
feedback procmail would not have looked the same:

	David W. Tamkin		An excellent proofreader and betatester
	 <dattier@wwa.com>
	Josh Laff		For stresstesting procmail (and me :-)
	 <jal@uiuc.edu>
	Dan Jacobson		For his many useful suggestions
	 <Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM>
	Rick Troxel		Because I crashed his Convex way too often :-)
	 <rick@helix.nih.gov>
	Roman Czyborra		For his enthusiastic ideas
	 <czyborra@cs.tu-berlin.de>
	Ari Kornfeld		The guardian angel of SmartList
	 <ari@perspective.com>
	Alan K. Stebbens	For his endless creativity and suggestions
	 <aks@sgi.com>
	Philip Guenther		Sometimes faster at repairing bugs than I can
	 <guenther@gac.edu>					write them :-)

----------------------

Please note that this program essentially is supposed to be static; that
means no extra features (honouring the VNIX spirit) are supposed to be
added (though any useful suggestions will be appreciated and evaluated if
time permits).

Cheers,
       Stephen R. van den Berg	of Cubic Circle, The Netherlands.

Internet E-mail:		<srb@cuci.nl>
				<berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de>

Snail-Mail:	P.O.Box 21074
		6369 ZG Simpelveld
		The Netherlands

Procmail mailinglist:		<procmail-request@informatik.rwth-aachen.de>
SmartList mailinglist:		<SmartList-request@informatik.rwth-aachen.de>
Procmail & SmartList updates and patches list (readonly):
			<procmail-announce-request@informatik.rwth-aachen.de>

----------------------
A recent version can be picked up at various comp.sources.misc archives.
The latest version can be obtained from your friendly neighbour mirror site:

	ftp://ftp.aist-nara.ac.jp/pub/misc/mail/filters/procmail/
	ftp://ftp.net.ohio-state.edu/pub/networking/mail/procmail/
	ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/unix/mail/procmail/
	ftp://ftp.psg.com/pub/unix/procmail/
	ftp://ftp.fdt.net/pub/unix/packages/procmail/
	ftp://hub.ucsb.edu/pub/mail/		(hand updated)
	ftp://ftp.tamu.edu/pub/Unix/Mail/	(hand updated)

Or directly as:

ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/procmail/procmail.tar.gz
----------------------
