Playing sounds when mail arrives

Following has been tested on a Mandrake 8.x install.

How to play a sound when mail from a specific person arrives:

Add the following to your Procmail recipes:

  :0 hwic
  * ^From:.*joat@757.org
  | cat > /dev/null; /usr/bin/esdplay /usr/share/sounds/gaim/RedAlert.au

Explanation:

The "h" flag in the first line causes only the header to be fed to the command line.
The "w" flag in the first line delays removal of the lock file until the sound has finished playing
The "i" flag in the first line suppresses error checking for playing the sound.
The "c" flag in the first line means to process a copy of the incoming messae. (You want it to play the sound and file the message, not play the sound and lose the message!)
The second line is who you're watching for. Note the ".*" just in front of the mailing address. This allows the filter to match the e-mail address and ignore the username data preceding it.
The third line copies the header to /dev/null (you have to do something with the header) and then plays the sound file (substitute your favorite player and sound here)(milage may vary, see PM-Tips for a similar method using an audio server).

How to store an incoming message in the INFOSEC folder and play a sound:

This trick requires nesting. Add the following to your Procmail recipes:

  :0c
  * ^From:.*joat@757.org
  {
  	:0ci
  	|/usr/bin/esdplay /usr/share/sounds/gaim/RedAlert.au

  	:0
  	INFOSEC
  }