Summary: Mail aliases and DU

From: Andy Townsend <townsend_at_hpl.umces.edu>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 10:27:51 -0500

Dear all,

Warm thanks to those who responded to my question so rapidly:

Dan Hubbard <dhubbard_at_thepalace.com>
Dr. Tom Blinn <tpb_at_zk3.dec.com>
Burch Seymour RTPS <bseymour_at_encore.com>
Steve VanDevender <stevev_at_hexadecimal.uoregon.edu>
Juan Gallego <Little.Boss_at_physics.mcgill.ca>
Hugh Pritchard <Hugh.Pritchard_at_MCI.com>
Arpad B. Palotas <abpalota_at_hungary.com>
John F. Marten <root_at_tigger.oslc.org>
Matt J. L. Goebel <goebel_at_emunix.emich.edu>
Len Senetza <len_at_helix.net>
mortimer_at_physics.uq.edu.au
Matt Moore <moore_at_shemp.bucks.edu>
Robert L. McMillin <rlm_at_syseca-us.com>
Tom Smith <smith_at_alum.mit.edu>
Lucio Chiappetti <lucio_at_ifctr.mi.cnr.it>
Anthony Holloway <star_at_ast.man.ac.uk>
Dan Roscigno <ddr_at_phys.ufl.edu>

Here is the original posting:

---
Good afternoon all,
Due to the buffer overflow problem we have disabled POP mail for users
outside of our site.
Some people would like to be able to access their mail using Eudora from
their homes.
Therefore, I am trying to set up sendmail 8.8.8 to send two copies of
each mail message to mail recipients; one to their local network account
and one to their home ISP accounts.
I see that the aliases file can only contain local mailboxes.  And, I
don't want to use .forward as I would like the users to receive their
mail both on-site and from home.
Is this possible?  If so, how is it accomplished?  The mail server is an
Alpha running Dunix 4.0b.
Thanks, and I'll summarize,
Andy Townsend
University of Maryland - Horn Point Laboratory
townsend_at_hpl.umces.edu
(410) 221-8487
---
The overwhelming response was that this was possible to accomplish
through the aliases file.  The syntax I had tried was incorrect, and I
had misread the man pages for aliases.  First some excerpts of what I
received and then what I did:
>
In the Rand Mail Handler software (MH), there is a utility called slocal
that can do ingenious things.  See the reference page.  It's much easier
to do this with something that runs in user context than trying to get
sendmail to do it.
>
Take a look at procmail.  I do this all the time with that... source is
on
        ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de
The recipe in my ~/.procmailrc file is:
        #
        # Forward all mail from me to me AND my popmail account
        #
         
        :0
        ! rlm-pop
>
Re duplicate mail:
About duplicating mail for somebody into an office account and an home
account, we had bad experience for one of our users who asked for that.
He read mails from home, and did not read the same mails again from
office, therefore they remained there cluttering his inbox.
Our arrangement is that users with a workstation have mail delivered
directly to that. Since most workstations are for personal use, it is
not a problem if they keep mail ("in evidence") in the inbox or move it
to folders under their login directory.  For PC users incoming mail is
stored on /var/spool on a server. We run imapd and they use PC-Pine
(which most but not all Unix users use as well) and a .pinerc
configuration such that read mail is transferred to their PC disk.  The
problem is with the few users not using an imap client.
>
The solution that I chose:
Have you tried putting the following TWO lines in the user's .forward
file:
\user
user_at_home.isp.com
After doing that I ran newaliases and everything worked perfectly.  The
"\" before "user" prevents a local mail loop.
Thanks again for your attention and responses!  IMHO this list contains
the most helpful group of people I have ever "met".
Andy Townsend

Received on Wed Dec 17 1997 - 16:53:45 NZDT