The .kiwirc file

The .kiwirc file is used by the Kiwi spam-protection program to read configuration information. The location of the .kiwirc file is determined thusly:

If the environmental variable KIWIRC is defined, the value of KIWIRC is the location of the kiwirc file.
Otherwise, if the environmental variable HOME is defined, look for a file named .kiwirc in the directory HOME points to.
Finally, determine the uid that the kiwi spam-protection process is running as (using geteuid), find out the home directory of that uid, and look for a .kiwirc file there.

The Kiwirc file has the following syntax:

Lines containing a # character do not parse any information at or after the # character. In other words, comments in a .kiwirc file are started with the # character. Exception: When the # character is quoted (Example: "#"), the hash is treated does not begin a comment.
Lines exist in one form: A variable name (containing only alphanumeric characters), followed by zero or more white space characters (space or tab), followed by an = sign, followed by zero or more white space characters, followed by the value for the variable (either quoted with the " character or containing only alphanumeric characters).

An alphanumeric character is one of the following:

A letter in the English language, either upper case or lower case
A number in the English language
The character - or _

The following variable names are accepted by version 2 of the Kiwi spam protection suite:

kiwi_qmail kiwi_sendmail_path kiwi_days_short kiwi_days_mid kiwi_days_long kiwi_forward kiwi_append kiwi_my_mailbox kiwi_my_address kiwi_maillog kiwi_key kiwi_password kiwi_mid_process kiwi_bouncemail kiwi_utf8_output kiwi_inbound_process

The meaning of the variable names are as follows:

kiwi_qmail

If set to TRUE, this tells the Kiwi spam protection suite that we are running Qmail instead of Sendmail. Cookies are delimited by a - instead of a +, and the environmental variable DTLINE is used to determine what email address an incoming message was delivered to.

kiwi_sendmail_path

The location of sendmail on our system. On Linux systems, this will usually have the value /usr/sbin/sendmail. On most other Unices, this will generally have the value /usr/lib/sendmail.

kiwi_days_short

The number of days before a message with a short timeout times out. This number is an integer.

kiwi_days_mid

The number of days before a message with a medium timeout times out. This number is an integer.

kiwi_days_long

The number of days before a message with a long timeout times out. This number is an integer.

kiwi_forward

If set to TRUE, accepted mail is forwarded to the address set by kiwi_my_address. This should not be set to TRUE if kiwi_append is set to TRUE.

kiwi_append

If set to TRUE, accepted mail is appended to the file pointed to kiwi_my_mailbox. This should not be set to TRUE if kiwi_forward is set to TRUE.

kiwi_my_mailbox

The file to append if kiwi_append is set to TRUE.

kiwi_my_address

The email address to forward mail to if kiwi_forward is set to TRUE. If kiwi_mid_process or kiwi_inbound_process is set, this is the single argument given to the respective process.

kiwi_maillog

The log file used by Kiwi to make a note of messages that have been rejected.

kiwi_key

The encryption key used by Kiwi.

kiwi_password

If the Kiwi cookie someone uses to send mail has the value of kiwi_password, the message is accepted without checking the value of the cookie.

kiwi_mid_process

If a message is accepted by the Kiwi software suite, and the encrypted cookie is a MID TIMEOUT cookie, and this value is set to a non-blank value, then the accepted message will be piped to the program pointed to by kiwi_mid_process with a single argument of the value for kiwi_my_address. This overrides the value of kiwi_forward, kiwi_append, and kiwi_inbound_process in the case of messages with a MID TIMEOUT cookie.

kiwi_bouncemail

If a message is not accepted by the Kiwi software suite, and kiwi_bouncemail is set, then the person sending the message will receive a copy of the file pointed to by kiwi_bouncemail, followed by the message they sent.

kiwi_inbound_process

If a message is accepted by the Kiwi software suite, and this value is set to a non-blank value, then the accepted message will be piped to the program pointed to by kiwi_inbound_process with a single argument of the value for kiwi_my_address. This overrides the value of kiwi_forward and kiwi_append.

kiwi_return_path

If this is set, the Return-Path header of all mail sent out by the Kiwi software suite is set to this value. If this is not set, the Return-Path header of all mail sent out by the Kiwi software suite is set to 'nobody@example.com'. Since some machines' spam filters require a domain the resolves in the return path, this should be set to a known email address, perhaps one that silently discards mail.

Note: This only works on Qmail systems. On sendmail systems, give sendmail an argument of -f, followed by the desired return-path, to change the return-path.

kiwi_utf8_output

If this is set to "TRUE", Kiwi will output utf-8 when displaying decoded cookies with five-letter messages instead of the default iso 8859-1