How to avoid that the 'vacation' program answers spams mails

If you want to avoid that during your holidays the 'vacation' program send reply to spams mails which create another unnecessary response from a mail server saying that it doesn't know this user ... this is the solution:

  1. start your 'vacation' program as usual (see "man vacation")

    the vacation program generates a file called .forward in your home directory. 

    The content of the file looks like this
(just substitute "ballisti" with your user_name)

\ballisti, "|/usr/bin/vacation ballisti"

  2. edit this file ".forward" to look as follows:
    (Please note: the following is ONE LINE even if your display shows it on two or more lines)

    \ballisti, "|/usr/bin/awk '! /^X-Spam-Status: Yes/ {print}'|/usr/bin/vacation ballisti"

    (of course you will substitute "ballisti" with your user_name)

    Please note the use of the following characters: " | ' ^ ! / { }

    If you have some doubt or problem editing (PC users) then feel free to ask me to do this editing for you: in the long run it save time to both of us!

    Please, feel free to look at my /home/ballisti/.procmailrc and /home/ballisti/.forward.bkup files