[ TechnoCage | Caskey | wbl ]

WBL

What is wbl?

WBL is a really simple tool that can be used in a .qmail file for managing a white/black list of email addresses. It only does one thing--it checks for entries in ~/.wbl that it uses as a regex against the From: field of an incoming email. If it matches a line with a +, it forwards the email to the white list, if it matches a line with a - it forwards the email to the blacklist.

This program is primarily of use to force communication from well-known or trusted recipients to bypass spam filters and other processing that might accidentally catch something you want to see. I manage my whitelist by periodically examining my sent-mail box and my inbox to see who I am trying to communicate with and place those in my whitelist. When I can't unsubscribe from an email list, I put it on my blacklist which uses the qmail bouncesaying program to bounce the email. This won't work for spam or other emails without a valid reply-to address, but it will work to keep it out of your inbox.

Note that WBL is *not* intended to be a spam filter, it is simply a whitelist/ blacklist management tool that serves to keep email that you really want to see out of your normal filters. If you need more advanced rules and filtering, look into procmail or the like.

How do I use it?

Place wbl into a convenient location such as /usr/local/bin/ or ~/bin. Set up a line in your .qmail file to call it. The two command line parameters are the recipients that whitelist and blacklisted emails will be sent to. If an email matches one or the other, then it will be sent.

First, in ~/.wbl, place email addresses or names of people you wish to receive email from unhindered. 

 +friend@example.com
 # my boss sometimes uses a hotmail account
 +ron200219@hotmail.com
 # I can't get this person to stop sending me chain letters
 -bozo@example.com

in ~/.qmail: 

  |/usr/local/bin/wbl <you>-whitelist <you>-blacklist
  # Below here goes your usual (existing) email filters.
  # or just your Maildir/mbox delivery

in ~/.qmail-whitelist 

  ~/.Maildir/

in ~/.qmail-blacklist 

  |/var/qmail/bin/bouncesaying 'Email not accepted for delivery.'

Where do I get it?

There is a tar available, however the script itself is only a few dozen lines long so you may just want to download it here.

latest version 1.1

Each package has a GPG signature signed by the distributor, Caskey Dickson. You can get a copy of my key for verification here. For those without GPG, below are the checksums of the distribution. So you can verify the signatures, these are also available in the file checksums.txt in the download directory.

Older versions

Who would waste their time on this?

What if it doesn't work?

Well, you can try emailing the author below, however before you do, I hope you have at least read through the qmail man pages and have already configured your qmail system correctly.

The author can also be found idling in the marko IRC channel #marko on irc.freenode.net:6667.

Where is the official wbl web site?

http://www.technocage.com/~caskey/wbl


Last updated: 2002-10-30