qconfirm - Control through email

The qconfirm program provides a command line interface to control qconfirm. If you don't usually use shell access to the machine qconfirm is running on, you can use the qconfirm-control program as email interface to the qconfirm program. For example the user floyd is running qconfirm for the mail address floyd@smarden.org. He is running the qconfirm-control program as email interface at the mail address floyd-qconfirm-control-@smarden.org through the dot-qmail file ~/.qmail-qconfirm-control-default.

To see the current list of pending envelope sender addresses, floyd simply sends an empty mail to floyd-qconfirm-control-@smarden.org. He then receives a message like this:

 Subject: qconfirm list
 From: "The qconfirm program" <floyd-qconfirm-control-64710faeb54fb627b0fa4f835c2ff8cf@smarden.org>
 To: floyd@smarden.org

   qconfirm list  | sort -r
 2002-11-13_13:44:44 worldsexygirl@lycos.co.kr
 2002-11-13_11:17:52 revistasemcd@globo.com
 2002-11-13_09:15:42 tamms22000@yahoo.com
 2002-11-13_06:42:15 null@hotelro.com
 2002-11-13_05:36:14 pink@smarden.org
 2002-11-13_05:02:17 998@21cn.com
 ...

Now floyd decides to manually confirm the envelope sender address pink@smarden.org, to add the currently unknown address burdon@smarden.org to the list of known addresses, and to silently drop a message from the envelope sender address worldsexygirl@lycos.co.kr. He simply replies to the message he's received from the qconfirm-control program like this:

 To: The qconfirm program <floyd-qconfirm-control-64710faeb54fb627b0fa4f835c2ff8cf@smarden.org>
 Subject: Re: qconfirm list
 
 On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 03:11:45PM -0000, The qconfirm program wrote:
 >   qconfirm list  | sort -r
 > 2002-11-13_13:44:44 worldsexygirl@lycos.co.kr
 drop
 
 > 2002-11-13_05:36:14 pink@smarden.org
 accept burdon@smarden.org
 
 thanks.
 
 > 2002-11-13_05:02:17 998@21cn.com

The qconfirm-control program then processes the message, runs the qconfirm program on floyd's request and sends an acknowledgement message to floyd@smarden.org:

 Subject: qconfirm control
 From: "The qconfirm program" <floyd-qconfirm-control-64710faeb54fb627b0fa4f835c2ff8cf@smarden.org>
 To: floyd@smarden.org
 
 > On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 03:13:26PM -0000, The qconfirm program wrote:
 unknown command.
 
 > >   qconfirm list  | sort -r
 > > 2002-11-13_13:44:44 worldsexygirl@lycos.co.kr
 > drop
 worldsexygirl@lycos.co.kr: drop.
 
 > > 2002-11-13_05:36:14 pink@smarden.org
 > accept burdon@smarden.org
 pink@smarden.org: confirm.
 burdon@smarden.org: ok.
 
 > thanks.
 Removing temporary authorization.
 Stopping processing here.

How to configure control through email

Choose an address extension to use for controlling qconfirm through email. For example: qconfirm-check is running for the mail address <floyd@smarden.org> through the dot-qmail file ~floyd/.qmail. qconfirm for this address should be controlled by floyd@smarden.org through the email address floyd-qconfirm-control-@smarden.org which is handled by the dot-qmail file ~floyd/.qmail-qconfirm-control-default.

Create this dot-qmail file and the .qconfirm/control directory as the user floyd now, and tell qconfirm-control that floyd@smarden.org is the owner who is authorized to control qconfirm:

 $ mkdir ~/.qconfirm/control
 $ echo '|envdir .qconfirm/conf qconfirm-control' >~/.qmail-qconfirm-control-default
 $ echo 'floyd@smarden.org' >~/.qconfirm/conf/QCONTROL_OWNER

You need to adapt the dot-qmail filename if you use virtualdomains.

Test the qconfirm-control program by sending a mail to floyd-qconfirm-control-@smarden.org, floyd@smarden.org should receive a mail message listing currently pending envelope sender addresses.

Note that qconfirm-check and qconfirm-control must run as the same user and must use the same qconfirm directory.

Gerrit Pape <pape@smarden.org>

$Id: control.html,v 1.2 2002/11/17 17:14:43 pape Exp $