Configuring 'vacation' with SpamAssassin

The Unix 'vacation' program is used to send an automated response to email while on vacation. The standard way of turning on and off your 'vacation' system is by issuing the command

  vacation

  .vacation.msg     (containing your response message)
  .forward          (telling the mail system to pipe your mail to
                     the 'vacation' processing system)

However, the .forward file created by the 'vacation' program is not compatible with the use of Spamassassin.

Here is the correct way to enable and disable the 'vacation' program when you are using SpamAssassin:

To enable vacation processing, go to your home directory on the Sun system and, using an ordinary text editor:

Create and/or edit the file .vacation.msg in your home directory containing the desired message text.

Add or uncomment the following block of lines at the end of the .procmailrc file, after all the spam-processing parts:

  :0c
  |/usr/bin/vacation USERNAME

Replace 'USERNAME' with your own user-name.

Comment or delete the above lines in your .procmailrc. The comment character is '#', so it would look like

  # :0c
  # |/usr/bin/vacation USERNAME

It is not necessary to delete the .vacation.msg file.