Summary: Group aliases for sendmail

From: Erik Sundermann <erik_at_petaxp.rug.ac.be>
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 1995 18:08:26 +0100

A few days ago, I asked the following question:

> I'm trying to configure sendmail to work with group aliases.
> When I add the line
>
> > our_group: user1,user2,user3
>
> to /usr/var/adm/sendmail/aliases, everything works fine.
>
> However, when I create a file /usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list
> (containing user1, user2 & user3 on separate lines) and add the
> following line to /usr/var/adm/sendmail/aliases,
>
> > our_group: ":include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list"
>
> I get the following error from our mail-daemon (mserv.rug.ac.be)
>
> > ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> > While talking to mserv.rug.ac.be:
> > >>> RCPT To:<":include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list">
> > <<< 550 <":include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list">... User unknown
> > 550 ":include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list"... User unknown
>
> Sendmail obviously doesn't know how to correctly interpret a line
> starting with ':include'.
>
> The sendmail man-pages say ...
>
> > Aliases can also have the syntax :include:filename to ask sendmail to
> > read the named file for a list of recipients. For example, an alias
> > such as:
> >
> > poets: ":include:/usr/local/lib/poets.list"
> >
> > reads /usr/local/lib/poets.list for the list of addresses making up the
> > group.
>
> which seems to be exactly what I have done.
>
> Before you ask: yes, I have run 'newaliases' afterwards, and I have
> even restarted the whole sendmail.
>
> We are running OSF/1 3.0 on a DEC 3000-600.

1) A number of people suggested removing the quotes. When I change the
   line in the aliases file to
> our_group: :include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list
   the error from the mail-daemon looked like ...

> ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> While talking to mserv.rug.ac.be:
> >>> RCPT To:<:include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list>
> <<< 554 <:include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list>... Cannot mail
> directly to :include:s
> 554 :include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/groepje.list... Service unavailable

2) Someone else suggested removing the blank, so that the line looks like...
> our_group::include:/usr/var/adm/sendmail/our_group.list
   but that makes no difference.

3) At one time, I suspected that there was an error because of an
   empty aliases.dir file ...
> # ls -l /var/adm/sendmail/aliases.*
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root system 0 Nov 6 13:08 aliases.dir
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root system 1024 Nov 6 13:08 aliases.pag
   but that seems to be normal.

Anyway, I reconfigured sendmail from scratch (the configuration file
dated from a previous OSF/1 release), and found out that a piece of
code concerning the alias-translation has been changed. Since then,
everything works fine.

Thanks to :
        Michael Matthews <matthewm_at_sgate.com>
        Sheila Hollenbaugh <shollen_at_valhalla.cs.wright.edu>
        Brad Davis <bdavis_at_zinc.com>
        Craig Morgan <C.Morgan_at_soc.staffs.ac.uk>
        Patrick O'Brien <pobrien_at_draco.harvard.edu>
        Hugh Messenger <hugh_at_garply.com>
        George R. Rumney II <rumney_at_amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov>
        Bob Berrigan <berrigan_at_kent.wednet.edu>
        Jon Reeves <reeves_at_zk3.dec.com>
        Jim Neeland <neeland_at_madmax.hrl.hac.com>
        Paul Bushen <pb_at_hawke.co.uk>

                                                      ,,,
Erik Sundermann (0 0)
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Received on Mon Nov 06 1995 - 19:26:49 NZDT

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