Is that all there is?

Unable to figure out the proper procmail syntax to kick off the processing script only after the new email folders had been updated, I broke down and emailed the support team at Pair Networks, my ISP. Within a few hours of my email — on a Sunday morning, no less — I received a reply recommending that I use qmail instead, pointing me to their knowledge base. The syntax of qmail is far simpler than that of the more cryptic procmail, so the logic I needed was fairly straight-forward:

/usr/home/mena/mail/new_haiku
/usr/home/mena/mail/haiku_archive
|/var/qmail/bin/preline /usr/home/mena/bin/append_new.sh

The qmail naming convention is such that the name of the file can specify a unique email address for processing, which is exactly what I was looking for. Qmail rules for the email address joe@example.com would be in a file named .qmail-example:com-joe — not exactly intuitive, but easy enough after a few tests.

And then, just like that, it was working: I can now email a haiku to a specific email address and expect to see it added to my archive in the space of a minute or two. I didn't use puppet after all, but I combined my two shell scripts into one more efficient one, learned that sed on BSD (used by my ISP) isn't the same as sed everywhere else, and above all found a simple solution to a lingering problem.

So that's it — the anti-climactic conclusion of an ambitious project — although I have a feeling I haven't run out of things to puppetize at home. Has anyone seen the dog?