This topic wasn’t on my “to do” list, but it came up. So here it is.

Use of procmail to filter emails is definitely not a new thing, that is what it does after all. But in my attempt to configure it, I found very little clear information about support for "Maildir" style delivery amongst the wealth of documentation on the subject.

The 2 main differences in a .procmailrc that works with Maildir, is the trailing slash on the MAILDIR value and the way target folders are specified.

eg. The start of my .procmailrc looks like this:

MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir/
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR

:0
* ^To:.*(@lists\.danga\.com)
.List/new

So, the 2 points to note, as I said are. The maildir path ends in "/" and the destination is a folder within the Maildir, which is a hidden directory with its own set of cur/new emails in it.

Thanks to procmail, I now only have one location to maintain my filtering rules. My email can then be accessed through IMAP from work, home, laptop and webmail without them being moved into the wrong folders.

This blog entry doesn’t actually contain any technical notes, which is a first for me. I think I might do posts of the style more often, as my posts will hopefully be more frequent if I allow myself the freedom to discuss ideas in general, and not have to delve into a particular topic.

On that note, it’s been a hectic few months and doesn’t look like slowing down before the end of the year. Unfortunately, my blog is one of the many aspects of life that has been neglected. However, I have been busy doing, and learning, different things and should have some interesting topics to write about when I do eventually get around to putting something together.

A short list of tools, technologies and techniques crossing my path recently that I intend to blog (more) about include:

• Caching (memcached/apc)
• MySQL 5 Features (clusters, replication, stored procedures, triggers)
• Zend Framework
• Xen virtualisation
• HA — heartbeat et. al
• Load balancing
• Advanced Apache mod_rewrite (Rewrite mappers)
• PHP multi-processing (forking)
• Web services (SOA)

And possibly others. That should give you an idea of what to look forward to, as well as a list to help me remember. I hope to post on at least one or two of those topics before the end of the year, and maybe some other lighter material as well.
Then I’m off on holidays to Canada for 5 weeks, snowboarding and doing the general tourist thing. Should be great fun and much needed break, but until then… I’ve got a project to hack on!