Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 250045
Procmail - add NO_USER_TO_LOWERCASE_HACK
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:12:11 EST
Description of problem: FC6 and sendmail use procmail by default as local system mailer. Procmail cannot handle mail for users with uppercase letters in their username (such mail bounces to root for me) without a special "hack", NO_USER_TO_LOWERCASE_HACK, which is apparently not currently included. This is a documented feature of procmail. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): I currently use procmail-3.22-17.1 from Red Hat/FC6, however, this request applies to all active FC/F7+ procmail releases. How reproducible: Always. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install FC6, sendmail, and procmail (default), set-up and run; 2. Create a user with uppercase letters in username; 3. Attempt to send local mail to this username; 4. Follow the bouncing e-mail. Actual results: Mail bounces (to root for me) with error: "... ----- Transcript of session follows ----- procmail: Unknown user "vince" 550 5.1.1 <Vince@presario.localdomain>... User unknown ..." A complete bounced message is attached. Expected results: Actually, this is a feature of procmail, and should be expected, without the NO_USER_TO_LOWERCASE_HACK "hack". However, since it can be reasonably predicted that many new users will create usernames which include uppercase letters, I suggest that it would be best to add this "hack" to account for such cases. I have read about other users having this problem, and/or wondering why usernames should not contain uppercase letters. Most users apparently don't ever bother to read their system mail and/or don't use sendmail/procmail, otherwise I would expect to see far more complaints/questions. Additional info: I do not know enough about programming/compiling to fix this myself - I don't know exactly where or how to add this "hack". Reference: http://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/lfaq.html#UPPER Thanx and Regards, Vince
Created attachment 160213 [details] Sample of bounced system mail
Created attachment 160220 [details] modified procmail config.h file
OK, I'm not really very knowledgeable/experienced with this stuff, but I'm tired of the bouncing e-mails, so I fixed this problem as follows: Reference: http://www.terraluna.org/dgp/cvsweb/procmail/config.h: "... /*#define NO_USER_TO_LOWERCASE_HACK /* uncomment if your getpwnam() is case insensitive or if procmail will always be supplied with the correct case in the explicit delivery mode argument(s) */ ..." I downloaded the procmail-3.22-17.1.src.rpm from redhat/FC and installed with "rpm -ivh procmail-3.22-17.1.src.rpm", then from the /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/ folder: "rpmbuild -bp procmail.spec", then edited the /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/procmail-3.22/config.h file (attached) as per the above reference to include: "#define NO_USER_TO_LOWERCASE_HACK", then used checkinstall (instead of "make install") to create a new procmail-3.22-1presario.i386.rpm, and installed that with "rpm -Uvh --force procmail-3.22-1presario.i386.rpm". This eliminated the procmail bounce errors, but I still had to add "MODIFY_MAILER_FLAGS(`LOCAL', `+u')dnl" to the /etc/mail/sendmail.mc file (as per http://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/lfaq.html#UPPER) and reload sendmail to finish the job. With these two changes (to procmail-3.22/config.h and sendmail.mc), e-mail is now being successfully delivered to user Vince as intended. I still request/suggest that the active releases of procmail be revised to incorporate the "NO_USER_TO_LOWERCASE_HACK", unless there is some special reason not to do so. I would further request/suggest that sendmail/sendmail.mc be revised to include the "MODIFY_MAILER_FLAGS" as an option, as it is also required to accomplish the goal of local system mail delivery to usernames with uppercase letters. Thanx and Regards, Vince
Well, the code disabled by the define was replaced after procmail-3.10, so adding it to current config.h won't change anything. FC6 procmail can deliver mail to usernames with uppercase letters. As for sendmail, please see bug #63677.