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Re: pop3 config question to avoid duplicate messages



On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 09:26:20PM -0400, Laran Evans wrote:
> Well, the wierd thing is that I was using fetchmail. I have fetchmail -> 
> procmail -> mutt. I have a hunch that after sorting the messages into 
> mailboxes 
> fetchmail didn't recognize that the messages had been downloaded. Is there 
> any 
> validity to that?

This is possible; I don't use fetchmail (I'm a getmail guy -- thanks, Charles!),
but I have the following process in place for incoming mail (POP3 via SSL):
    1. getmail fetches the mail, pipes it to maildrop
    2. maildrop sorts mail; all messages are piped to reformail
        `reformail -D 8000 $MAILDIR/.duplicate-cache`
    3. maildrop filters the mail and delivers it to my mailboxes

The reformail bit is relevant to your question. The line I've quoted for you
above will log all messages to a file (in my case, .duplicate-cache); in context
of my .mailfilter, it will drop messages that are already found in
.duplicate-cache. `man reformail` for more info. The trick is to get your MDA
(fetchmail or getmail) to pipe to reformail *before* they deliver to your
mailboxes. Then you can easily keep track of duplicates.

-- 

Will Maier