How do I get the email in a script running from my .forward-file?

Question

I am writing a script to handle an automated email inbox. I've never really dealt with mail servers before, but have gotten to a point where every email sent is executing my script. I am using a .forward file in the home directory of the recipient user that looks like this:

"|exec /home/[MY USER]/magic || exit 75 #[MY USER]"

The script simply takes it's input and writes it to a file at this point. The problem is, I don't know how to find the email being sent, and I can't seem to find any documentation on how the .forward-file works in detail. How do I get to the email?

Any help is greatly appeciated :)

Answer 1

Some general information about the ~/.forward file and the interaction with the mail server is described here, and the Filtering Mail FAQ also contains some information.

While just using a dot-forward file might be sufficient you very typically want to use procmail for more powerful mail processing.