scripts.mit.edu

MIT SIPB Mail Script Service

The mail script service uses procmail allows people to set up scripts to process e-mail using an Athena account. Although this service has been designed with reliability in mind, it should not be used to run critical applications that cannot tolerate downtime.

Your mail scripts will automatically process mail sent to
YOUR_USER_NAME@scripts.mit.edu or
YOUR_USER_NAME+ANY_TAG@scripts.mit.edu.

You can access the tag on a message from your procmailrc file by parsing the Delivered-To header or as the $1 variable.

To sign up for the service:

athena% add scripts
athena% signup-mail

(If you are confused about how to run the above commands on Athena, e-mail scripts@mit.edu for assistance. You must have an Athena account and understand the MITnet rules of use in order to use the service.)

This signup process will create a mail_scripts directory. Learn about procmail and modify your ~/mail_scripts/procmailrc file to do whatever mail processing you desire. You may want to look at our sample files in /mit/jbarnold/mail_scripts. If your scripts need to write data, be sure to give daemon.scripts the necessary access in AFS.

Finally, add yourself to the scripts-announce mailing list if you would like to receive announcements of major service changes and outages. This list receives less than one e-mail per month on average.

For more information, see our list of Frequently Asked Questions.