Safecat is a software that uses Dan Bernstein's maildir algorithm for safe copying of standard input to specified directories. It simplifies email processing by reducing the risk of data loss and improving organization.
To get started with safecat, simply specify your desired destination directory (without a filename). Safecat will select a unique filename every time, ensuring that multiple processes can write to the directory simultaneously. If you wish to rename a file after safecat completes, you can easily do so. In general, it's ideal to use a single, separate process to handle tasks like renaming, collecting, and deleting files. You can run this process as a daemon, from cron jobs, or from your mail reader.
Installation of safecat is easy, with a four-step process. First, extract the tarball (tar xvzf safecat-VERSION.tar.gz). Then, navigate to the safecat version directory (cd safecat-VERSION) and run the make command. Next, execute make setup check.
While there are only minor changes in this version, the updated RPM support courtesy of Vadim Druzhin and Charlie Brady is noteworthy. One thing to keep in mind is that safecat is known to truncate files longer than 2GB on some platforms. While conditional code has been added to support large files on Linux, the software's main function is not designed for such use cases. If you're working with large files, you may want to consider another tool, like rsync.
Version 1.13: N/A