MAILFILTER(1)

okay so bestie, welcome to MAILFILTER(1) 💖 straight out of the User Manuals section, and trust, this one is a whole vibe: it deletes spam before the spam even gets to touch your laptop. let's get into it 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

mailfilter — Filters e-mail, gets rid of spam 🗑️✨

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

mailfilter [OPTION]...

that's it. that's the whole entrance. main character energy, no notes 👑

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

Mailfilter is a very flexible utility that gets rid of unwanted spam mails before you have to go through the whole ordeal of downloading them onto your local computer 😭 like, why would you even invite them in. it offers support for one or many POP accounts and it's especially useful for dialup connections via modem, ISDN, etc. (iykyk, the struggle was real) 📞

so here's the tea: Mailfilter connects to any POP mail box and compares part of its content to a set of user defined filter rules. that way the spam gets deleted directly on the mail server. it never even makes it to your machine. iconic behaviour fr fr 💀✨

with Mailfilter you can define your own filters (rules) to determine which e-mails should be delivered and which ones are considered waste. and the rules are Regular Expressions, so you can flex all those familiar options from other mail delivery programs such as procmail(1), for example 🌈

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🫶 RETURN VALUE 🫶

the mailfilter program normally returns 0, but -1 if an error occurs. 😭

buuut, if it has been invoked with the return-value command line switch, it gives back a positive integer in case there are messages on the POP server. empty POP accounts would then result in a return value of 0. using the switch, mailfilter can be embedded into a shell script more easily 🐚✨ (script girlies, this one's for you)

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🎀 CONFIGURATION 🎀

the behaviour of Mailfilter is controlled by command-line options and a configuration file. the program will not start without it. not a drill bestie, it simply will not go 🚫

example configurations can be looked up in the mailfilterex(5) man page, in the INSTALL document, or inside the doc/ directory of the Mailfilter distribution 📂

by default Mailfilter tries to read $HOME/.mailfilterrc to get all its settings from. this is the place where all changes should be made, unless it is explicitly specified otherwise. a comprehensive list of all supported options and keywords can be found in the mailfilterrc(5) man page 📖

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🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

• -h, --help — Display help information 🆘 (when you're lost, she's got you)
• -L, --logfile=FILE — Specify logfile location 📝
• -M, --mailfilterrc=FILE — Specify rcfile location 🗂️
• -r, --return-value — Enable additional return values 🔢
• -s, --skip-ssl-verify — Skip verification of SSL certificates (Do not use unless you know better!) ⚠️

ok so for real on that last one: Do not use unless you know better! the manual said it, I'm just the messenger 💀

• -t, --test — Simulate deletes 🧪 (practice round, nothing actually gets deleted)
• -i, --ignore-time-stamps — Ignore invalid Message-ID time stamps (Do not use unless you know better!) ⏰⚠️

yeah, same energy here: Do not use unless you know better! 🙈

• -v, --verbose=LEVEL — Specify level of verbosity 🗣️ (crank it up if you want her to overshare)
• -V, --version — Display version information 🏷️

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

mailfilterrc(5), mailfilterex(5), procmail(1), regex(7) 💖

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright © 2000-2022 Andreas Bauer <baueran@gmail.com> 💌

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. 😤 no cap.

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and that's the whole page bestie 🎀 tysm for reading — this little number is the Mailfilter page, dated January 2009, and it lives at MAILFILTER(1) in the manual. go forth and let it eat that spam for breakfast 🍓✨ bye ily 💜