The .forward file belongs in your home directory. This is the file most mail delivery systems check for special instructions about delivering your mail. Some delivery systems may use other files; check with your system administrator. In this case, we want all mail to be sent through procmail. It gets a little complex to account for things like file locking. My .forward file (which is fairly standard) reads:

"|IFS=' ' && exec /home/users3/bbell/local/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #bbell"

You will want to replace the location of procmail with the full path of wherever it is installed on your system. Also replace the "bbell" at the end of the line with your username. Lastly, the permissions on the file need to be set so that the mail delivery system can read the file. It most cases, this can be done with the command:

chmod 644 .forward

Page URL: Author: Bob Bell Last modified: