RCVTRIP(1)

NAME
rcvtrip - notifies mail sender that recipient is away.

SYNOPSIS
rcvtrip [ -d ] [ address ]

DESCRIPTION
Rcvtrip makes it possible for you to notify the sender of a message that you are on holiday and you won't be answering your mail for some time. Rcvtrip is run by MMDF on your behalf rather than by you directly.

To enable use of rcvtrip, put the following line in your .maildelivery file:

*    -    pipe    R    rcvtrip $(sender)

Make sure that your .maildelivery file is not writable by anyone but you. You may also place a "custom" reply message in a file named `tripnote'. Finally, you should create an empty `triplog' file.

When rcvtrip processes a message, it performs the following steps:

    1)  Decide whether this is the type of message that should get a reply.

    2)  Decide who the reply should get sent to.

    3)  Decide whether this sender has already gotten a reply.

Rcvtrip decides whether this is the type of message that should get a reply by looking at the contents of the "Resent-To:", "Resent-Cc:", "To:" and "Cc:" header fields. If the recipient has an .alter_egos file (described below), then one of the addresses in that file must appear in the one of these header fields for a reply to be sent. If the recipient does not have an .alter_egos file, then the recipient's name or a first-order alias of the recipient's name (e.g. dlong-->long) must appear in one of these header fields for a reply to be sent. This procedure insures that rcvtrip will not reply to messages sent to mailing lists, unless the recipient's name (or some variant of the recipient's name) is explicitly mentioned in a header field.

If rcvtrip has decided that it should send a reply for the message, then it looks at several other address fields to determine to whom the reply should be sent. It uses, in order of precedence:

    1)  addresses in `Resent-Reply-To:'

    2)  addresses in `Resent-From:' and, if present, `Resent-Sender:'

    3)  addresses in `Reply-To:'

    4)  addresses in `From:' and either `Sender:', if present, or the address argument from the command line.

Rcvtrip will notify any originator of mail who has not previously been notified unless you pre-load their address into the `triplog' file (see below). The reply begins with some standard text (supplied by rcvtrip) followed by whatever text the user has placed in the `tripnote' file (or a canned message if the `tripnote' file is missing). The originators' names are recorded in `triplog', along with the date and time the message came in, an indication of whether it was answered (`+'=yes), and the first few characters of the subject. This appears as:

+ jpo@nott.ac.uk	Wed Oct 8 16:08 >> about your last message

FILES

<login directory>/tripnote
    The user-written reply message is located in this file.

<login directory>/triplog
    This contains a list of who sent a message, what was its subject, when it arrived, and if a response was sent. It can also be initialized by hand to contain the addresses, one per line, which are not to receive replies.

<login directory>/logfile
    If this file exists, then rcvtrip will log diagnostic information into it. If the -d switch is given, then extensive output is generated for debugging purposes. It is not a good idea to leave -d enabled if this file is left lying around, as the output can be quite voluminous.

<login directory>/.alter_egos
    The optional file composed of `user@domain' lines for all addresses to be considered `you'. This is needed if you have multiple hosts forwarding their mail to you. If this file is present, then the standard comparisons against your username and first-level aliases of your username do not occur.

<login directory>/.maildelivery
    The user's mail delivery specification file. The example above shows the line that should be added to .maildelivery to enable use of rcvtrip. In this line, the $(sender) argument is optional (but recommended). You may need to give the full pathname of rcvtrip if it is not in the search path of a vanilla /bin/sh.

SEE ALSO
rcvalert(1), maildelivery(5)

AUTHOR
Bruce Whittaker (Initial Version)
Julian Onions (Total Rewrite)