We have some sendmail aliases configured to distribute
meeting minutes to a mailing list AND copied to an
archive file for later reference, using the following
lines in /etc/aliases:

computer:       :include:/etc/mail.lists/computer
computer-minutes:  computer, "|/usr/local/sbin/minutes \
/home/minutes/computer"

The minutes script is as follows:

#! /bin/sh
#
# minutes - add mail message to a minutes directory
#
# This script reads the standard input and appends it to a
file in
# the directory specified by the first command line argument
and the
# current year..  The file
# name is always the current year, month, and day in the
form YYYYMMDD
# and will be created if it does not already exist.  The
purpose of this
# script is to facilitate the automatic archiving of
committee minutes
# sent to a mailing list.

year=`date +%Y`
date=`date +%Y-%m-%d`
fname=$1/$year/$date
if [ ! -d $1/$year ] ; then
   mkdir $1/$year
fi
touch $fname
cat >>$fname

and has permissions

-rwxrwxr--   1 root     mail          607 May 15 15:46
/usr/local/sbin/minutes

If we send an email to computer-minutes, it bounces back
with error messages:


   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors
-----
"|/usr/local/sbin/minutes /home/minutes/computer"
    (expanded from:
<computer-minutes.upenn.edu>)

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
sh: minutes not available for sendmail programs
554 "|/usr/local/sbin/minutes /home/minutes/computer"...
Service unavailable
procmail: Lock failure on "/var/spool/mail/gao.lock"
procmail: Lock failure on "/var/spool/mail/gur.lock"
procmail: Lock failure on "/var/spool/mail/macy.lock"
procmail: Lock failure on "/var/spool/mail/brensing.lock"

gao, gur, macy, brensing, and hughett are the names given
in the computer mailing list.  Mailing to plain computer
(without the minutes archiving) works without any problems
and produces no complaints about lock files.  This same
setup worked fine under RH 5.1.

Paul Hughett